You may be wondering what a 5000 meter (3.11 mile) Thanksgiving Road Race has to do with My Uri International Business? It didn't immediately dawn on me either (!!) but read on and learn how a FUN Family time in upstate New York presented itself as a natural marketing opportunity for our home business ...
For "Thanksgiving 2007" our family was invited by our friends Michael and Joanne to spend a week at their farm house near the beautiful historical village of Cazenovia near Syracuse, NY.
This was our first time to "upstate" New York and we had no idea what to expect. After a long 13 1/2 hour road trip from North Carolina, lengthened by over an hour due to the fact that I took a 35 mile turn in the wrong direction on I-81 (!!), followed by a good night's sleep, a gorgeous countryside unveiled itself from the covers of the early morning fog. Even though the trees had lost their fall foliage and the farm fields now had but a random stubble left after the final harvest, the views from my bedroom that morning of rolling hills, old farm houses, red barns and silos as well as the glimpses we had caught through the fog the previous night of the early 19th century pre-Civil War village indicated that Cazenovia is a beautiful place to visit all year round. Any last lingering misgivings on whether it was worth while to have endured the long trip up were soon dispelled by Michael's famous omellette for breakfast! My friend is an artist with a talent that many aspiring gourmet chefs find out, often too late, is God given and cannot be acquired merely through a degree at a cullinary school.
Because I ALWAYS start my breakfast with a cool shake made with Uri International's live whole food based "InstaFresh" juice powders, there was nothing forced or awkward about sharing the benefits of this super healthy product with our friend Joanne, and she readily accepted the offer of a freshly prepared mix of 1 scoop of Beyond Berries and 1 scoop of The Feast Supercharged (mixed with 2 ice cubes and 8 ounces of water in a Uri Shaker Cup).
Joanne loves a fresh cup of coffee every morning to "get going". When I told her that the Feast Supercharged contained not only the same super blend of "fruits and berries", "greens and vegetables", "seeds nuts and sprouts", probiotics and "enzymes and minerals" as found in The Feast, but ALSO contained an additional mix of Supercharged Berries, Seeds and Leaves (including Guarana Seed extract, green tea extract, green coffee bean extract and Schizandra Berry extract) she was eager to try it as a healthy alternative to her normal coffee brew.
In fact, I told her that the previous day on the long 13 1/2 hour drive up from NC I never once had the urge to drink even one cup of coffee at the many gas stations along the way; I only drank a fresh mix of The Feast Supercharged every time I felt the need for a boost. Prior to starting my home business with Uri International this would have been unheard of; there is no way that I would have lasted a long road trip without frequent coffee consumption. Despite limited sleep the night before our departure I felt totally fresh without any sense of fatigue and it felt really good knowing that not only was I getting supercharged by the active ingredients found in the Feast Supercharged's seed and leaf components, but that I was also getting the benefit of over 70+ nutrient dense concentrates from fresh live whole foods.
This marked truly a revolution in the way we travelled (!) and this new found beverage consumption also spilled over in the way we planned our food consumption. Instead of stopping at the slew of fast food chains along the way, my wife had prepared lunch and dinner consisting of: home-made yoghurt with home made organic granola, whole wheat bread made with our freshly ground organic wheat flour, USDA certified 100% organic apple juice (Mott's brand), carrot and celery sticks, granola bars, home-made butter and peanut butter on the sandwiches, lots of fruit such as apples, bananas, mandarins, cheeses, hard boiled farm fresh free-range eggs and plenty of bottled water. Does that not sound much healthier than the Interstate highway convenience stop food ??!!
After breakfast Michael and Joanne took us to the nearby Chittenango Falls State Park.
Here, within minutes of Cazenovia, we were able to see a 167 foot waterfall roar down ancient rock formations into a canyon with snow-covered pine trees that almost made you believe you were far away in a Rocky Mountain wilderness. There is even a rare snail that lives in this microcosm that is found nowhere else in the world!
OK, I hear you yell,"WHAT ABOUT THE FUN RUN, HAROLD?!!"
Are you getting the feeling by now that I was the perfect picture of peace and relaxation in anticipation of the the 3+ mile running race that I was to tackle the very next day? ... Not at all concerned about the fact that I had not run a competitive race for over 20 years !!
When Michael and Joanne's daughters Hillary and Natalie had heard of our family plans to visit they asked if the kids would be interested in joining them for a Thanksgiving Day "Turkey Trot" ... "a little road race around the village", they said, "Small, nothing to worry about. Just have them bring their sneakers ... Oh, and maybe their Dad would like to join them? Push the little baby in the stroller ... that kind of thing".
So OFCOURSE I had nothing to be concerned about right? This was going to be fun! ....
Hmmm, I should have thought long and hard about this prospect.
Hillary is known to train for marathons (!) and she had let it slip that she was close to final preparations for a marathon in a matter of weeks. Natalie likes to "help her sister" by running along with her for support ... This should have given me a clue that this was no "trot around the scenic village".
Having quietly registered all of our kids and myself, they now informed me that the race was over an hours drive from their home in a town called Baldwinsville, north-west of Syracuse, and that we were required to be at the pre-race registration a good deal of time before the race. The weather forecast began to look increasingly bleak and temperatures were "freshening" to put it mildly ...
"Kids, it's time for the Supercharged!", I declared resolutely as the seriousness of the event began to dawn on me. If you think I was taking things too seriously, I wish you could have seen the crowd that descended on Baldwinsville that Thanksgiving morning. While other more sane people were barely awakening the dawn to the prospect of a few hours of gently stuffing cranberries and assorted spices up a slain turkey's rectum, the folks that gathered for the 39th Annual Baldwinsville Kiwanis Turkey Day Race had the kind of aggressive posture of still having to go out and catch a live bird with their bare hands!!
Even though the longest race was a respectable 6 miles, the contestants bore all the semblance of taking on a full marathon, every bit as serious in their pre-race preparations, even down to the little kids getting ready to run the 1/2 mile! My kids were convinced that they required a boost and had all clamored at me for a healthy dose of The Feast and Beyond Berries. It seemed a wise thing to have asked for ... a secret weapon appeared a necessary requirement.
Suddenly my home-schooled kids who had never run so much as 10 laps around the house competitively, were about to be thrown into their first contest against public school kids accustomed to doing this several times a week. It was amusing to see everyone jockeying for position and even more so to see the vigorous sprint, more suited to a 100 yards dash, with which the pack shot off with short-lived enthusiasm. The rain was by now beginning to come down in icey sleet like formation and it was hard to remain enthusiastic about my own looming event. I was beginning to realize that all those long track pants of my fellow contestants were meant to be worn during the race and were not about to come off whilst my own jeans which I wore over my running shorts felt desirably warm even though I knew that they would hinder any serious running and I would have to dispense with them to brave the cold.
I was proud to see my oldest 12 year old girl come around the corner with the leading group and she finished roughly in 17th place out of an
estimated 120 kids. Her 9 year old brother was close behind, fighting all the way as was his 7 year old brother who battled valiantly in the latter 30%. Second last but totally undeterred was my 4 year old girl who was proud to have run her first race and she ran straight to a race organizer in a turkey suit for a big hug. 
The start of our race was some distance walk from the central high school building where the race was being hosted. As I neared the start line it became apparent just how many folks had turned out with religious devotion to this annual "warm-up" to the Thanksgiving celebrations. It literally felt as if most considered the most normal thing to do ... getting up in pitch dark ... driving for 1+ hour ... shivering in the cold sleet ...
Then just as suddenly my Feast Supercharged was kicking in. I began to see this race as do-able. I could picture myself running this thing, maybe even staying with the front pack, an outside chance of succeeding in my age group perhaps? Hey, I even got bold enough to put my special shirt advertising "Powered By the Feast SuperCharged" over the top of my fleece. There was no turning back now, I had to run this race with valor ... SUPERCHARGED !!
I will spare you the excitement of the race development, the grit and determination, the thrill of the finish, except to say that the final verdict is now in the public domain ...
The official race results for the 39th Annual Baldwinsville Kiwanis Turkey Day Races give evidence of the fact that I finished in 70th place out of 526 participants in the 5000 meters in a time of 22 minutes and 13 seconds. Congratulations to all who finished the race, especially to the winner Mike Heymann of Tully who ran the race in 16:38 followed closely in second place by Michael Snihur in 16:41 and Brad Argentine in 16:46.
The 10 km run was won in a blistering 32:27 by Jake McAndrew of Oswego, NY convincingly ahead of Mike Melfi of Liverpool, NY who came in second in 33:11 and Shad Miller of Providence, Rhode Island who came in third in 33:38.
At the Awards Ceremony I made sure I had plenty of Uri SAMPLES to give to the winners of the events together with my Uri International business card. I also sampled several participants who expressed an interest in using this product as a means to providing good nutrition for their long distance running and training for marathons ... and rightly so! The Feast is the only product on the market that provides a synergistic, all natural, nutritionally balanced combination of nature's most beneficial whole food concentrates, including minerals, enzymes and probiotics. It provides a convenient all-in-one concentrated whole food supplement for today's active and demanding lifestyles, including competitive running !!
Congratulations also to our friends Hillary and Natalie. Hillary rand her 10 km as preparation for the Charlotte, NC marathon where she ran a personal best well under 4 hours. Thanks to both of you for sharing this truly FUN event with our family. We are inspired to do this again !!!
Final Congratulations to their parents Michael and Joanne who were so impressed with Uri International's Live Whole Food Based Nutrient Dense products The Feast, Beyond Berries and Feast Supercharged that they signed up as new distributors as a result of our time together (no doubt impressed by my results in the fun run ... LOL!) and immediately converted that into succes by signing up their friends David and Deborah S. who also came to the Thanksgiving gathering and were equally impressed by the prospects afforded by a home business with Uri International !!
For "Thanksgiving 2007" our family was invited by our friends Michael and Joanne to spend a week at their farm house near the beautiful historical village of Cazenovia near Syracuse, NY.
This was our first time to "upstate" New York and we had no idea what to expect. After a long 13 1/2 hour road trip from North Carolina, lengthened by over an hour due to the fact that I took a 35 mile turn in the wrong direction on I-81 (!!), followed by a good night's sleep, a gorgeous countryside unveiled itself from the covers of the early morning fog. Even though the trees had lost their fall foliage and the farm fields now had but a random stubble left after the final harvest, the views from my bedroom that morning of rolling hills, old farm houses, red barns and silos as well as the glimpses we had caught through the fog the previous night of the early 19th century pre-Civil War village indicated that Cazenovia is a beautiful place to visit all year round. Any last lingering misgivings on whether it was worth while to have endured the long trip up were soon dispelled by Michael's famous omellette for breakfast! My friend is an artist with a talent that many aspiring gourmet chefs find out, often too late, is God given and cannot be acquired merely through a degree at a cullinary school.Because I ALWAYS start my breakfast with a cool shake made with Uri International's live whole food based "InstaFresh" juice powders, there was nothing forced or awkward about sharing the benefits of this super healthy product with our friend Joanne, and she readily accepted the offer of a freshly prepared mix of 1 scoop of Beyond Berries and 1 scoop of The Feast Supercharged (mixed with 2 ice cubes and 8 ounces of water in a Uri Shaker Cup).
Joanne loves a fresh cup of coffee every morning to "get going". When I told her that the Feast Supercharged contained not only the same super blend of "fruits and berries", "greens and vegetables", "seeds nuts and sprouts", probiotics and "enzymes and minerals" as found in The Feast, but ALSO contained an additional mix of Supercharged Berries, Seeds and Leaves (including Guarana Seed extract, green tea extract, green coffee bean extract and Schizandra Berry extract) she was eager to try it as a healthy alternative to her normal coffee brew.
In fact, I told her that the previous day on the long 13 1/2 hour drive up from NC I never once had the urge to drink even one cup of coffee at the many gas stations along the way; I only drank a fresh mix of The Feast Supercharged every time I felt the need for a boost. Prior to starting my home business with Uri International this would have been unheard of; there is no way that I would have lasted a long road trip without frequent coffee consumption. Despite limited sleep the night before our departure I felt totally fresh without any sense of fatigue and it felt really good knowing that not only was I getting supercharged by the active ingredients found in the Feast Supercharged's seed and leaf components, but that I was also getting the benefit of over 70+ nutrient dense concentrates from fresh live whole foods.
This marked truly a revolution in the way we travelled (!) and this new found beverage consumption also spilled over in the way we planned our food consumption. Instead of stopping at the slew of fast food chains along the way, my wife had prepared lunch and dinner consisting of: home-made yoghurt with home made organic granola, whole wheat bread made with our freshly ground organic wheat flour, USDA certified 100% organic apple juice (Mott's brand), carrot and celery sticks, granola bars, home-made butter and peanut butter on the sandwiches, lots of fruit such as apples, bananas, mandarins, cheeses, hard boiled farm fresh free-range eggs and plenty of bottled water. Does that not sound much healthier than the Interstate highway convenience stop food ??!!
After breakfast Michael and Joanne took us to the nearby Chittenango Falls State Park.
Here, within minutes of Cazenovia, we were able to see a 167 foot waterfall roar down ancient rock formations into a canyon with snow-covered pine trees that almost made you believe you were far away in a Rocky Mountain wilderness. There is even a rare snail that lives in this microcosm that is found nowhere else in the world!OK, I hear you yell,"WHAT ABOUT THE FUN RUN, HAROLD?!!"
Are you getting the feeling by now that I was the perfect picture of peace and relaxation in anticipation of the the 3+ mile running race that I was to tackle the very next day? ... Not at all concerned about the fact that I had not run a competitive race for over 20 years !!
When Michael and Joanne's daughters Hillary and Natalie had heard of our family plans to visit they asked if the kids would be interested in joining them for a Thanksgiving Day "Turkey Trot" ... "a little road race around the village", they said, "Small, nothing to worry about. Just have them bring their sneakers ... Oh, and maybe their Dad would like to join them? Push the little baby in the stroller ... that kind of thing".
So OFCOURSE I had nothing to be concerned about right? This was going to be fun! ....
Hmmm, I should have thought long and hard about this prospect.
Hillary is known to train for marathons (!) and she had let it slip that she was close to final preparations for a marathon in a matter of weeks. Natalie likes to "help her sister" by running along with her for support ... This should have given me a clue that this was no "trot around the scenic village".
Having quietly registered all of our kids and myself, they now informed me that the race was over an hours drive from their home in a town called Baldwinsville, north-west of Syracuse, and that we were required to be at the pre-race registration a good deal of time before the race. The weather forecast began to look increasingly bleak and temperatures were "freshening" to put it mildly ...
"Kids, it's time for the Supercharged!", I declared resolutely as the seriousness of the event began to dawn on me. If you think I was taking things too seriously, I wish you could have seen the crowd that descended on Baldwinsville that Thanksgiving morning. While other more sane people were barely awakening the dawn to the prospect of a few hours of gently stuffing cranberries and assorted spices up a slain turkey's rectum, the folks that gathered for the 39th Annual Baldwinsville Kiwanis Turkey Day Race had the kind of aggressive posture of still having to go out and catch a live bird with their bare hands!!
Even though the longest race was a respectable 6 miles, the contestants bore all the semblance of taking on a full marathon, every bit as serious in their pre-race preparations, even down to the little kids getting ready to run the 1/2 mile! My kids were convinced that they required a boost and had all clamored at me for a healthy dose of The Feast and Beyond Berries. It seemed a wise thing to have asked for ... a secret weapon appeared a necessary requirement.
Suddenly my home-schooled kids who had never run so much as 10 laps around the house competitively, were about to be thrown into their first contest against public school kids accustomed to doing this several times a week. It was amusing to see everyone jockeying for position and even more so to see the vigorous sprint, more suited to a 100 yards dash, with which the pack shot off with short-lived enthusiasm. The rain was by now beginning to come down in icey sleet like formation and it was hard to remain enthusiastic about my own looming event. I was beginning to realize that all those long track pants of my fellow contestants were meant to be worn during the race and were not about to come off whilst my own jeans which I wore over my running shorts felt desirably warm even though I knew that they would hinder any serious running and I would have to dispense with them to brave the cold.
I was proud to see my oldest 12 year old girl come around the corner with the leading group and she finished roughly in 17th place out of an
estimated 120 kids. Her 9 year old brother was close behind, fighting all the way as was his 7 year old brother who battled valiantly in the latter 30%. Second last but totally undeterred was my 4 year old girl who was proud to have run her first race and she ran straight to a race organizer in a turkey suit for a big hug. 
The start of our race was some distance walk from the central high school building where the race was being hosted. As I neared the start line it became apparent just how many folks had turned out with religious devotion to this annual "warm-up" to the Thanksgiving celebrations. It literally felt as if most considered the most normal thing to do ... getting up in pitch dark ... driving for 1+ hour ... shivering in the cold sleet ...
Then just as suddenly my Feast Supercharged was kicking in. I began to see this race as do-able. I could picture myself running this thing, maybe even staying with the front pack, an outside chance of succeeding in my age group perhaps? Hey, I even got bold enough to put my special shirt advertising "Powered By the Feast SuperCharged" over the top of my fleece. There was no turning back now, I had to run this race with valor ... SUPERCHARGED !!
I will spare you the excitement of the race development, the grit and determination, the thrill of the finish, except to say that the final verdict is now in the public domain ...
The official race results for the 39th Annual Baldwinsville Kiwanis Turkey Day Races give evidence of the fact that I finished in 70th place out of 526 participants in the 5000 meters in a time of 22 minutes and 13 seconds. Congratulations to all who finished the race, especially to the winner Mike Heymann of Tully who ran the race in 16:38 followed closely in second place by Michael Snihur in 16:41 and Brad Argentine in 16:46.
The 10 km run was won in a blistering 32:27 by Jake McAndrew of Oswego, NY convincingly ahead of Mike Melfi of Liverpool, NY who came in second in 33:11 and Shad Miller of Providence, Rhode Island who came in third in 33:38.
At the Awards Ceremony I made sure I had plenty of Uri SAMPLES to give to the winners of the events together with my Uri International business card. I also sampled several participants who expressed an interest in using this product as a means to providing good nutrition for their long distance running and training for marathons ... and rightly so! The Feast is the only product on the market that provides a synergistic, all natural, nutritionally balanced combination of nature's most beneficial whole food concentrates, including minerals, enzymes and probiotics. It provides a convenient all-in-one concentrated whole food supplement for today's active and demanding lifestyles, including competitive running !!
Congratulations also to our friends Hillary and Natalie. Hillary rand her 10 km as preparation for the Charlotte, NC marathon where she ran a personal best well under 4 hours. Thanks to both of you for sharing this truly FUN event with our family. We are inspired to do this again !!!
Final Congratulations to their parents Michael and Joanne who were so impressed with Uri International's Live Whole Food Based Nutrient Dense products The Feast, Beyond Berries and Feast Supercharged that they signed up as new distributors as a result of our time together (no doubt impressed by my results in the fun run ... LOL!) and immediately converted that into succes by signing up their friends David and Deborah S. who also came to the Thanksgiving gathering and were equally impressed by the prospects afforded by a home business with Uri International !!
So in closing, you an see how easy it is to incorporate this home business into your every day lifestyle. The UriLife style affords you a way to derive the utmost benefit from eating healthy food and sharing this with every person you love or meet. I am thankful to Brett Rademacher for introducing me to the best business opportunity ever and for the super sales team that he has developed with the sales and marketing tools that are a joy to use ... from the cutting-edge automated internet based systems, the radio and magazine coops right down to simple tried and true tools such as a T-Shirt advertisement for the Feast Supercharged !
As you can gather, I'M HAVING A FEAST !!! ...
You're invited to this BANQUET ... keep reading this BLOG ...
Happy New Year greetings to you and your Loved Ones for 2008!,
Harold K.
Uri International Sales Manager
