24th Annual AIDS Walk Colorado
First race in Colorado. I've been feeling pretty good with my running lately. In the last couple weeks, I almost hit 5 miles, and I have gained a lot more consistency. Heading into the race, I wasn't sure what to expect. I wanted to beat 30 minutes for the first time ever, but I wasn't confident that it was going to happen. At least not today. That would never happen today... (wink wink).
I bumped into my new friend Carli, and as we wandered toward the start, we chit chatted about running, races, life in general, and her recent triathlon! We listened to some awesome speakers, sharing stories about how important the fight against AIDS is.
Countdown. Ready. Go.
About a half mile into the race, my ipod died. Flash back to 12 hours before. Guess which smarty forgot to charge his ipod. There's nothing more that I hate than listening to myself breathe while running. Now I'm stuck listening to that and worrying about everyone within a 12 mile radius that can hear how loud I breathe/wheeze while I run. Picture Toy Story.
So señor huffandpuff continued trotting his merry way along. Since I didn't have music, I would offer words of encouragement to those that stopped mid way. "Come on!" "Let's go!" "You've got this!" I am positive that without these words, they would have not finished and dropped dead from exhaustion. You're welcome, strangers!
At about the 2.5 mile mark, all I could think of was "is this entire f***ing course uphill?" Because it was. Both ways. In the snow. Some dude that was huffing and puffing along side me for the whole race (again... no ipod. Double huffandpuff < solo huffandpuff) decided after a solid mile of being within 20 feet of each other, he would finally pass me and try to win. Douche.
Then, downhill. Sweet, lovely downhill.
Passed a few people. "Keep going!" "Almost there!" Again, I prove to have the most epic words of wisdom during races.
With about .1 to go, this girl decided to be a maverick and broke away from her friends into a dead sprint. So she flew by me, and I was like "YES!" (Again... brilliant!). About 10 seconds later, I started my sprint, and she started to slow a bit... so I just started yelling "Don't let me catch you!"
So then she started gunning it again, and we had that playful, competitive race to the finish line. Then I passed her.
And the douche.
Boom!
Fist bumps all around to my new compatriots, and a double-take walk back to the timer to see if I read that correctly. That couldn't be right...
Time: 29:00
