The previous post promoting the Tatur Estim8ur had poked a little fun at my friend Michael Stelly, indirectly referring to him as the slowest runner, all the while comparing him to the fastest runner Hayley. Well, as it turns out, Hayley was the 2nd fastest runner, and Michael helped at an aid station so we'll never really know this day how slow he would have been. But Mike, thanks for your help at the 2nd water stop.Friday found me out on the course at Chandler Park with Brian going over some fine details. Saturday, I ran with my RunnersWorld friends as they kicked off the fall training session. It was a short run, with most going 5-6 miles. The balance of the day was spent back at Chandler Park tying ribbons, pouring Pillsbury Gold Medal flour into arrows on the road to mark turns. Brian was the cone-meister and he placed around 400 orange cones out there to direct runners. It was a long day....no, make that a long HOT day.
7:00 am came soon enough Sunday morning. I was up at 4:00 and at the park at 4:30 checking course markings....yes, some were vandalized. I also had volunteered to ride my bike ahead of the lead runners to make sure they found the correct turns. My fear with that was that some of the course was off road, albeit on grass and fairly flat. I was just not sure that I could ride a 6 minute mile if I came to an incline, but actually, it turned out to be no problem at all.
Kara Cassel led the race from start to finish, and my friend Hayley pictured above with Stelly was second. Girls rock!
At the point where the race went into the rocky trail and between the huge rocks and bluffs, I turned my bike around and returned to a busy intersection to direct traffic and fell more into the spectatur mode.Now despite running a fast time, Kara did not finish in the top ten as the winners were those who finished closest to their predicted finish time. Hayley did nab a top ten, Hayley's mom finished top 10 in the 4 mile division,
as did Sandra (pictured above) and Wade. The winner in the 4 mile distance predicted their time at 40 minutes, a 10 minute mile pace. Now this race was ran WITHOUT watches or Garmins, anf the winner finished just 0.05 of a second over her time. That's not half a second, that's 1/20th of a second!! AMAZING!Just as amazing was the winner of the 8 mile. My friend Tom Dorothy finished just 5 seconds under his predicted time.
Not bad for an old guy!I had awesome help at the aid stations. I know I will miss out on thanking everyone, but here goes.
Don't know the names of these two princesses, but they met the runners before they hit the water stops with better than curb-side service.
And while the aid stations were not the usual all-you-can-eat buffets like they are in our trail runs, they were still adequate.
Glen was nominated for the Dork award.
Quite a crew at the start/finish area. Between timing, directing traffic, and recording runners and numbers, it was a busy place. Thanks to Charlotte, Susan, Kathy, Bob, Terrie, Dana, and another Terrie.Since this race was early Sunday morning, the party atmosphere was not in full swing as evidenced from a sober looking Kurt sitting on the tailgate. Ya know, we need a good breakfast beer. Thank you Kurt and Shelley, Glen, Dee, Michael,Vicky and Katy for your help at the aid stations, Michael Whitten, Loring Zeff, and Roman for your help in sending runners the right way on tricky turns. No one got lost....or at least if they did, they were discovered by the next day before the vultures got them. ANd last, thanks again to Stelly for letting me gank some pictures from his Facebook. Same goes to Terrie. Is it steeling when I thank you for what I swiped?
Seems even the ones who were neither fast or accurate had a good time though.We'll do it again next year, but at a different and maybe harder course.
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