Colder Bolder Race Pictures

Thank you all for your condolences and kind comments on yesterday’s post. I debated taking a week off from posting at Half-Fast given the circumstances, but what better way to honor a writer than to keep writing. Besides, getting back to normal can only help, so here are some race pictures from Sunday’s Colder Bolder 5K. (For those of you who ran it, here is the link to all the Colder Bolder race pictures.)

The first picture here features some guy in a Santa Hat. He was a good 30 - 40 feet ahead of me for most of the race. I decided to run him down at the beginning of the final mile and it took me forever to pass him, but I eventually did. Passing Santa doesn’t automatically relegate you to the naughty list does it? That’s me behind him in the white shirt with gray sleeves, we have less than a half mile to go in that picture. Not pictured: the little kid who blew past me like I was sap oozing down a tree trunk.


You can see in the picture below that I have removed my gloves and shoved them into my pockets. It didn’t occur to me at the time that doing so might make my pants look like standard issue Nazi fatigues. Maybe next time instead of my pockets I’ll just shove my gloves down the front of my pants. BAM! How do you like my race pictures now? Still not pictured: little kid who blew past me. I think he must have cheated and taken a short cut. It’s the only viable explanation as to how I got “kidded” which, for the record is not quite as bad as getting “chicked”.

Finally, just because I got such a positive response the last time I posted a picture of my kids, here is another picture of Cheer Team Vanilla. They are my motivation to run. Not in a I-want-to-be-healthy-to-see-them-grow-up kind of way, but more in a looking-for-any-excuse-to-get-out-of-this-crazy-house-so-I’ll-go-run kind of way.

More COWBELL!!

Official Race Pictures

My apologies for not posting anything yesterday. I spent the better part of my day trying to purchase World Series tickets from the Rockies website, only to discover that ticket sales had been suspended due to the sheer volume of requests. At this point the Rockies may as well just hang up a sign saying Red Sox fans and Scalpers Welcome.

The official race pictures from the Denver Marathon have been posted on brightroom. This picture to the right is me running down the final stretch. I remember being extremely happy about being close to the finish, but this picture doesn't really capture much happiness at all. I look like I'm in pain. On a positive note you won’t see any of the marathon finishers in that picture with me because I finished ahead of them. Come to think of it Haile Gebrselassie recently set the marathon world record at 2:04:26 which means that even he wouldn’t have finished ahead of me. It also means that while he can almost run a marathon in the time it takes me to do half of one he is NOT twice as fast as me. He’s maybe only 1.98 times as fast as me. Strangely enough I take a lot of pride in that.

Many of you have asked what race I’m going to sign up for and to be honest I’m really not sure. I’m leaning towards the Rudolph’s Revenge 10K. Viper pointed out a while ago that the 10K is becoming an endangered distance and I have also noticed that there seem to be very few 10Ks to run. A 5K is too short to motivate me to train hard, I just finished training for a half marathon so I don’t want to do that again just yet, and as for Ali’s suggestion that I run a marathon... I'm laughing so hard right now that I can barely type. You crack me up Ali!

Denver Half Marathon – The Aftermath

Note: This is essentially part 2 of my race report. If you missed part 1 which was actually about the running part of the race you can read it here.


Do I look cold? I am.

The thrill of my accomplishment was quickly stifled by the cold. Not 10 paces past the finish line I stopped while some kind volunteer cut the timing chip off my shoe. I was terrified that she was going to ask me to lift my leg up because rigor mortis had already set in. I was looking around somewhat dazedly at the crowd wondering how long it was going to take her to cut the stupid thing off when I realized she had already moved on to the next finisher.

Hey. Where’s my freakin’ medal? I crossed the finish line a good 20 seconds ago. I followed the other runners to a table where they were handing out bottled water. Not interested. Who’s handing out the medals? Finally I see a guy handing them out and I make my way over to him. Each step is painful but well worth the shiny goodness now within my grasp. He hands me the medal still in its plastic bag and my frozen, wet fingers can’t get the stupid thing open. I thought a beautiful woman was supposed to hang the medal around my neck for me upon completing the race. I’m disappointed.

After the medal ceremony handout, I followed the other medaled runners down some steps (ow ow ow ow) and found myself in line for something. I was a little confused from the cold and the pain and it didn’t even occur to me to find out what the line was for until someone came up behind me and asked “what’s this the line for?” I looked up to the front of the line and saw that it went into a tent.
“It’s the line to get in there,” I answered pointing at the tent.
“What’s in there?” he was clearly not satisfied with my original answer.
“No rain,” I said, as if it should have been obvious. At this point the guy in front of me turned and told us that they were giving out free pairs of dry socks in there. I frowned. What am I going to do with dry socks? My shoes are soaked and it’s still raining.

Next stop was the bag check to reclaim my sweatshirt and pants. Cheer Team Vanilla met up with me there and it’s a good thing too, because I was so sore that I needed help getting into my sweatpants. I grabbed another couple of goodie bags, my free beer and we began the walk back to the car. I was walking so slowly that my wife walked on ahead to start the car despite the fact that she was pushing 2 kids in a stroller.

All in all it was a good race and a really nice course past many of the Denver landmarks. The organizers did a wonderful job and if they keep pulling off world class events like this I bet they’ll even be able to get some celebrities to come run this thing.

Congratulations to Lei who was the closest to guessing what my time would be for the race. Lei if you want to e-mail me your address I will send your prize to you just as soon as I figure out what it is going to be.

Cheer Team Vanilla went up to my office to briefly get out of the rain and snapped this picture of the start.

I'm such a goofball.

This is the shirt I got... and my medal.

This is the vanilla shot that I didn't use... and my medal.

Awww, wook at da' cute widdle 8oz beer... and my medal. Yeah, this beer shot was not going to be enough to make me forget about the pain.

Did I mention I got this medal?

Things Only I Find Interesting

The Bolder Boulder race pictures have been posted. (If you ran the race and are looking for your photos you can find them here at brightroom.com, you’ll just have to search by bib number or name). Here’s a few of mine for your viewing displeasure, I’m the guy in the blue shirt. I am happy with them because last year when I looked at my Bolder Boulder race photos I thought that I looked tired and slow. My wife didn’t think that it was possible to look slow in a still photograph, but I assure you it is.

Some interesting stats about my time
- I ran in the 'ME' wave with my wife so that we could start together and out of 691 runners participants in our wave I finished 26th. Not too shabby!
- Based on last year’s time I qualified to run in the 'EC' wave and had I run in that wave I would have finished 124th out of 417 runners, assuming the same time.
- Of the 431 men my age (31) who finished I was 193rd.
- 49 men over the age of 65 beat me including an 80 year old who finished in 51:59. OK, you can get up off the floor and stop laughing now. Actually you can’t. Wait until you read the next one…
- 4 women over the age of 65 beat me (two of them were 70). Ouch! My ego is officially bruised.

A couple more pictures of me trying to get around people at the finish.