The trip from home to Poudre High School was uneventful, but interesting. At 4:45 AM all the cars on the roads were going to the same place. I parked my truck, skipped the porta potty and packet pickup and got into the buses line. As I neared the bus I remembered that my bib was my bus pass. Oh crap, I left my bib at home. What an IDIOT! I called Jan Baby several times and texted here but no joy. She was still catching zzzzz’s. So I jumped into the Ford and blasted home, running only one red light and doing a modest 55 in the 40 MPH zones. Got home, dashed inside and grabbed my bib, dashed back to the truck and on the return trip I upped the MPH by five and ran four lights; it worked. I got onto the last bus up the mountain, phew! While in route I pulled out my phone and added “bib” to my check list 🙂

Bus ride was a hoot. We were not singing songs, but we should have been! Upon disembarking at Mishawaka I went directly to the porta potties, no, I did not pass go nor collect $200.00. For you history buffs, Mishawaka was homesteaded in 1916, so it has some great Americana charm. That went smooth so from there I found a place to change out of my sweats and get into proper running attire; compression socks, over price New Balance running shoes, the briefest of shorts – sporting the Colorado logo no less, fanny pack with supplies, sun glasses and my favorite tank top in a lovely teal blue.

The final step before the gun was to get into the bag drop line. Green Events provided a honkin’ big box truck with volunteers stuffing bag after bag into the box of the truck. From there I spotted the 2:30 pacer about fifty yards down the road from me and the 2:45 pacer (Melody White) thirty yards up the road; a good place to get into the throng of expectant runners.

Looking at my watch I realized I didn’t have much time, just a minute or so and to my delight the race announcer got the race started exactly at 7 AM! Now that is refreshing.

I got off to a slow start. Bear in mind this race is 99% downhill, but not a steep downhill. I was literally just coasting along with the crowd. There was a racaus bunch behind me hooting it up AND they had a ghetto blaster blasting away. Looking back over my should I spotted Melody with her merry band of 2:45’rs. They were gaining on me so I picked up the pace to around 11:15/mi. I had it in my mind I would be doing 10:30/mi. more or less but everybody including myself said to take it easy at the start.

At the first pit toilet, somewhere around a mile down the road there was one runner exiting. At the second pit toilet, around mile 3 there were three women waiting. At the first water stop there were a row of porta potties with lines! Can you imagine having to wait in line to pee in the middle of a race? It was around mile five that I started to pick it up and got my pace down under 11/mi. As the miles slipped by I thought I was getting faster but when I would look at my Garmin it told a different story. The beautiful scenery was taking my attention more than my racing apparently.

Hitting mile eleven was a joy. Nothing was hurting too much. A little calf tightness still hanging around and maybe some foot soreness from the plantar fasciitis – though by now I had popped a few Ibuprofens ;-P Every step I was saying to myself; “new record, new record” since I had never been over eleven miles in my training prior to this run. At this point I knew I was going to finish the race. I was still cracking jokes, I slapped some old guy on the ass and said; “pick it up old man, we have to REPRESENT”. He gave me a big smile and fist bumped me. The whole route, when I could catch up to some other runner I would ask them if they had seen the 2:30 pace guy. “some where down there” was the answer. I was mystified, I felt like I was going to make it under 2:30 but I couldn’t spot that dude anywhere?!

The after party was great. My favorite irreverent group was playing and announcing results. This events has an amazing group of sponsors and holy cow, the shear number of smiling helpful volunteers was amazing, except for the ID Nazi, she wasn’t smiling.

One of my favorite Strava followers Zack Sanchez strolled by and I shouted out to get his attention. This guy amazes me. He started running a few months prior and was running twelve minute miles. He finished his first half marathon with a blistering 9:30/mi. pace. He just keep getting faster. I expect he’ll be in the eights by next month.