The "Irish Marathon"



Runner's Edge of the Rockies - my running group

 Today was the Running of the Green 7k race in Denver.  Dad and I met up, and ran a mile to the starting line, a 2 mile "warmup" (which was kinda fast!), and then started the 4.3 mile race.  Finished with a mile cool down, for a grand total of 8 miles.  Our official race time was 48:18 which is awesome!

It was a beautiful day, and the St Patrick's Day partiers were up bright and early.  I saw a shirt that said, "you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning"... and there were quite a few people participating.  We stuck with water and gatorade though.

Race report:  The race started in Downtown Denver "LoDo", so there were people crowded in between the buildings so much that I couldn't tell where the start line was, or which way we were gonna start running.  People were all dressed up in green, with green hats, beads, socks, tutu skirts, gorilla costumes... There was always something to look at. 
Mile 1 was chaotic and we started off a little fast because of it.  It's hard not to run faster when you are weaving in and out of people. 
Mile 2 was still a little crowded, Dad got run over by a stroller.  This is where the course started getting hilly.  Nothing major, but not a flat course. 
Mile 3 was much like mile 2, we picked up the pace a little, however, I still got run over by a dog and his owner. 
Mile 4 was nice.  There was room to swing your arms while you run and not hit anyone.  We finally got into a groove pace-wise. 
The final stretch 0.3 miles was where things got a little crazy.  We were running on the left hand side of the road with plenty of room to the right of us, and since we were in the road there was a median on my left.  All of the sudden I heard a scream and looked next to me to see a little girl falling out of a stroller that is halfway on the median and is tipping over.  I reached out and grabbed her and held up her and the stroller.  Her dad was so worried about running around us that instead of saying he needed to get by he rammed the stroller halfway on the median and almost dumped his daughter!... we continued running the last few steps and crossed the finish line!  Well being it was a St Patricks Day race, they were serving cornbeef sandwiches at the finish line... right after we crossed the finish line I got hit in the head with a flying cornbeef sandwich... It was a crazy little race!

Breakfast afterwards was at Mona's - YUM!  Next week we run 14 miles!