Weekend of fun!!

This past weekend was busy and a ton of fun!

Saturday started with meeting a friend and heading to Old Town Spring for some shopping. I was hoping to find lots of Christmas gifts, but it was not to be. I did find a couple, just not as many as I had wanted. We did find a winery though and stopped for glass to give us fortitude for more shopping – or browsing anyway!

Once the shopping was finished it was off to dinner and then a movie.

Eventually I made it back home and bed to rest up for the 25K the next morning.

I awoke dark and early – no light out yet at that time of the morning – dressed and gathered up all my stuff. And guess what? I remembered my Garmin this time! Yeah for me!

My plan was to do my leg of the relay and then continue on with my team mates for their legs so I could get my miles in.

I met up with my friends (Sandy and Julie) and after a quick pee break right as the gun was going off I joined the throng of other runners.

The goal was to get the 5.1667 mile loop finished in less than one hour, and ideally I was hoping to finish in less than 55 minutes.

Mile 1 – 10:35 – darn good for me!!
Mile 2 – 10:50 – oops, slowed down, but still under 11:00
Mile 3 – 10:36 – sped up a bit
Mile 4 – 10:18 – WOW!!
Mile 5 – 10:58 – I didn't think I slowed down that much. Must have been that killer overpass!!
Last 0.1667 – 2:15 – I am guestimating because I did not mark the time on the Garmin. Also this includes the ankle strap exchange which added several seconds.

Total time ~ 55:32 minutes
Pace ~ 10:45 min/mile

Holy Crap!!!! That is just extraordinary for me!!

This is not official – the timing people do not seem to think that splits are an important thing to see. Actually, our team's results are not even posted. I have e-mailed HMSA asking about it, and hopefully I will get an answer.

The next lap was quite a bit slower because Sandy is more of a walker than a runner. And she is also suffering from shin splints. We chatted the whole time and it was a nice recovery lap!

Julie is more of a runner, but is a little slower than I am. Can you believe it?!! So we started off the third lap and I was feeling good. We made it close to Shepherd and I looked over and saw all these people playing softball. Well, one of the players looked very familiar so I let Julie continue on while I went and checked.

Bad idea!

It wasn't him, but I went around and said hi to a couple other peeps to see if he and his partner (yes, it was the Montrose Softball League) would be showing up later – they were. As you can imagine this took several minutes and now I had to catch back up with Julie so we could finish together. I think it took me about 1.5 to 2 miles to catch her, but I finally did. And boy was I worn out! Teach me to do something like that again!

I called Sandy to let her know we were crossing the overpass and to get ready for us. She was there and we all crossed the finish line together.

Per the Garmin we completed the relay in 3:25:05, and according to FinishCam our gun time was 3:26:17.9. I find it rather interesting that FinishCam has our final time, but the chip people do not have anything posted. But the FinishCam people did not record us crossing with the comment “Sorry, your finish time is beyond the length of the recorded video.” We finished under the 3:30 time limit. Weren't they prepared to record the entire event? Oh well. I would have been nice for Sandy and Julie though since they are training for their first half-marathon.

We proceeded to pick up our finisher's reward. We were supposed to get t-shirts for finishing the relay, but something happened and they didn't have them. Instead we got the full 25K finisher’s jacket!! Totally awesome!!

It was now time to head home, but I decided I would check out the softball field again to see if my friends had shown up. They hadn't, so I waited. And waited. And waited some more. But they finally showed up! And it was great to see them.

We hung out until the last game was over. They invited me to meet them at Anita's Bar and Grille for some post game fun. Well that fun continued on to JR's, the Montrose Mining Company and then back to JR's. It was a fun night and a great day! Too bad I had to go home and get ready for my flight to Salt Lake City the next morning!

I just wish straight men could appreciate me as much as gay men do!