Torch Run

Jeff and I ran the Colorado Springs Torch Run for the Special Olympics yesterday. There are many segments of the run, but we did the ceremonial half mile walk and 5 mile run in the afternoon. It was quite different than any other running event I've done before. First of all, there were a couple of people from the local new channels running it so there were all sorts of cameras in our faces in the beginning. You can see a video of it here, and you can actually see me in the video, behind the news chick, to the right, and Jeff to the left. (I know, we're TV stars!) We started off walking together (it was a small group, maybe 20 runners) through the middle of downtown with a police motorcycle escort. Jeff and I were betting on whether or not the motor cops would have to put their feet down cuz they were barely moving. It was quite a balancing act, we were impressed, although they did have to put their feet down to balance themselves once, that we saw.

Even once we started running, it wasn't a race by any definition; we actually all ran together with those in front sharing the torch. That alone was interesting because if you lagged behind then they tried to get everyone to slow down, talk about pressure! I wasn't expecting that, I've always been free to run my own pace, and was counting on that for this run because I was not properly trained. We've been so busy with planting our garden, preparing our yard for landscaping, refinishing our table, and getting over the flu, that there wasn't much time for training. My longest run before the torch run was 4 miles, and I was pushing it. Normally I would at least get the mileage up to 6 before attempting a 5 mile race. So I was planning on keeping an easy pace (right now that's an 11 or 12 min pace per mile), and just trying to stick it out. Well, that didn't really happen, cuz everyone was running a 10 min pace or faster most of the time.

Jeff did just fine, he was chatting it up with a fellow CSPD officer the last half, but I really started lagging at four miles and slowed down to a walk. I ended up runing about a 4.5 miles, then hopped in a van they had following us to pick up stragglers (yep that would be me). I should have just stuck it out because the end was just around the corner, more than a quarter mile short of 5 miles, I would have been done in just a couple minutes. Oh well, I wasn't the only one in the van. Besides, I'm pregnant! I don't really enjoy running pregnant, not even the first months. I'm just so low on energy, which I always feel the most whenever I try to run when I'm prego. Thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

So in the end Jeff did great, his first running event and he did 5 miles without much training at all! And he was barely even puffin' at a fast 10 min pace. Not bad, huh?