That’s right, I came in first place at the Run With the
Horses race in Green River, Wyoming on Aug. 20, 2011. The whole family came
with me to this one. I love it when they come along. We drove from Morgan, Utah
where we were visiting my in-laws to Green River and arrived in time to enjoy
the river festival—a nice little community shin-dig with booths, games for the
kids (hoola-hoop contests, etc.), art galleries, hot rods on display, kayak
competitions, rubber duck races, a shrimp fry, and so on. It sounds more fun
that it actually was. You know how those things are, but we enjoyed it.
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| We had a nice stay at Little America |
We stayed about 20 minutes out of town in the Little America
Hotel because I wanted to tell my kids the story of my great Grandfather,
Stephen Mack Covey, who conceived of the resort after a spending a night alone
outside in a blizzard in that same area. His miserable experience inspired him
to build a place offering warm shelter, beds, and food to anyone else in the
future who might need it (I don’t know if his dream included a billboard every
5 miles reading NEXT STOP LITTLE AMERICA.) It was fun to stay there, but it
meant the family couldn’t come to the race because we only had one car and we weren’t
going to drag them to the start line at 5:00 a.m. only to have them wait for
four hours for dad to come back from running with some wild horses up in the
mountains.
So you’re already realizing the irony of this situation,
right? That’s right, I ended up finishing first, and no one, and I mean NO ONE,
not even strangers were there to cheer. It was hilarious. The race has a small
field, of course, and it’s an out-and-back course that basically runs up the
canyon and then back down again. And you do actually see wild horses. Pretty
cool. So I had been chasing a guy, trying to catch up with him almost the whole
way up. As I approached the half-way point, no one had come back the other way,
and I started to realize that I may be near the lead.
I saw the guy ahead of me turn around at the halfway point,
and when I got there, I asked the lady at the aid station, “How many people are
in front of me?” “Just that guy,” she said, gesturing to the guy about a
quarter mile ahead of me. I was in second place! I couldn’t believe it. I was
only running about an 8:15 pace. Well, as you can guess, I made sure I caught
up with that guy and passed him. I knew this would likely be the only chance in
my life I would have to finish a marathon first, so I was really pushing it on
the way down, and of course, I couldn’t stop looking behind me the whole way
down. I had visions of that guy catching me and passing me right near the end,
but my adrenaline ended up putting quite a bit of distance between me and him.
As I approached the finish line, there were no spectators. I
knew there wouldn’t be, and normally I don’t care about spectators at all, but
hey, I was in first place! Not a pair of hands clapping, not a stranger sipping
coffee to mutter, “Way to go, bud.” I just ran up to the spray-painted line on
the pavement and stopped. A volunteer noticed, jumped up out of her lawn chair,
and asked, “Did you just come in?” “Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re first,” she
said. It was hilarious.
It would have been nice to have the wife and kids there to
make a moment of it. Instead, they handed me this dorky plaque that you could
tell they had recycled from someone’s Eagle Scout award or something and placed
a spray-painted horseshoe on it instead. All the other finishers got a slab of
soda ash, which I guess is a mineral the town is known for mining. So I was
kind of jealous. But the ice cold watermelon at the finish was fabulous and I
ate a few melons-worth I believe. When I got back to Little America, my wife
asked, “How did you do?” I just smiled. “No way,” she said, “You got first
place!” She guessed it. I guess if nobody fast runs, a 3:42 will do it. We had
a good laugh over the plaque.
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