Mark your calendars - Dec. 3rd, 2005.

This will be Sue's big day. Across Canada, the Running Room holds an annual Santa Shuffle . It's a 5km run as well as a 1 km elf walk. People do fundraising and then the proceeds go to the Salvation Army. Last year the youth band that I'm involved in was the entertainment during the race. We sat outside, in early December, on metal chairs, holding brass instruments, for about an hour, playing Christmas carols. It was a nice day, but it's worth repeating that we were outside, sitting on metal chairs, in December! There's no way to keep warm doing that. Soooo...

Sue has picked this race as her 5km race. Hopefully the temperature doesn't fall too far below zero and there's not too much snow on the ground. If that's the case, then I know she'll make it through and I guarantee she'll be a lot warmer than I was last year.

While the Santa Shuffle will be Sue's big day, there will be a competitive event taking place at the same time. The first, possibly annual, DigiPrint road race. My good friend and co-worker Chris (who incidentally introduced Sue and I) has challenged myself, co-worker (soon to be marathoner) Jake and all the other staff members, there are only nine of us, to a 5km race. Now it's more then just a mere race for bragging rights. Since we are deeply involved in a tech field, we all suffer from 'tech envy'. For example, when one of us buy a new Mac iTem, the others drool enviously over it for a few weeks until someone buys something new, and so on... For our inaugural event an iPod nano is up for grabs. The cost will be offset according to how many of us DigiPrinters participate. Everyone puts in their share, I win the race and go home with a nano. Pretty sweet deal.

So far, three of us (Chris, Jake and myself) have committed to the race. Lorne, the owner, is still contemplating the idea (but he's had his nano for like three weeks already) and Jerry, the smoker, is on vacation, so we haven't heard from him. Yes, the trash talk has been fierce. Each of us with our own good reasons why we'll win. Chris has just over ten weeks to train. He's not out of shape, he plays tennis regularly and was a stellar runner in high school. His best 5km was easily under twenty minutes. Unfortunately for Chris, tennis ain't running and, for him, high school was 18 years ago. Jake is running a marathon and plans to, "keep up with Nick and then go ahead at the end." Unfortunately for Jake, training for a marathon requires a lot of SLOW running. While he can do the distance on one foot, I have my doubts about him being able to keep up a fast pace. I, on the other hand, have been running this distance with ease since the mid-June. I have also been running it at a reasonably quick tempo and I'm ready to up that tempo.

Place your bets & watch for updates.