Chains of Love Fun Run - 10 February 2002

What is fun about running? To keep the walking "Fun" and interesting we have been looking for local events that are agreeable to walkers. The Cal Poly Triathlon team sponsored a valentine 5K and 10K event. We checked with them and they more than welcomed walkers. We were scheduled to walk 8 miles (10K is about 6 miles) so the 10K was going to be a good start on the day. We showed up at Cal Poly on the morning of the event and things were much better than the Pinerodeo, there were other that looked like walkers. The 5K started first and I watched as the gun was fired and the runners took off leaving a sizable crowd of walkers. I looked at Katie and said this would be much better. We milled around stretching and prepping for our event. They made the announcement to gather at the start line for the 10K event and everyone moved up to the start line are. The gun was fired and the runners took off, leaving all the walkers behind, both of us, Katie and I, only two walkers in the 10K event. Once again we were the back of the pack and walking alone. A number of guys from the triathlon team were dressed as cupids on bikes, diapers with wings and arrows and working as sweepers for the event. We quickly introduced ourselves to the back of the pack sweeper, Clayton. We told him we moved at about 3 mile per hour so we would be out for about 2 hours. We left him know he could head up to the front of the pack and check out the runners. He road off to see what was happening and returned a few minutes later to stay with us through the rest of the event. We had a wonderful time talking with and getting to know our cupid, Clayton. Before we finished the first lap, it was a 5K course, the front of the 10K pack passed us. That took a little wind out of the old sails. In the end we walked the 10K in a record time for us, about 1 hour and 50 minutes.

We were pleased as we were in the middle of the second lap and were telling Clayton and a couple of other cupids why we were training. You should have seen the look on their faces when we told them Katie would be walking 20 miles per day for three days. It was a good feeling to hear then say they would not want to do that. These guys run triathlons and they did not want to go 60 miles in three days. We are athletes.

As it turns out the Triathlon team was more than happy to have us out on the course; they were having trouble with their scoring. The scores were all being recorded in an Excel spread sheet, someone tried to sort the sheet and ended up only sorting the time column. The problems was they did not realize this until it was too late and the spread sheet was a loss. They were using our extra time on the course to try and straighten out the times. Luckily they collected a piece of the number tag from each athlete as they crossed the finish line. These were in order so they had all the information they needed, it was just kind of scrambled. What fun. We finished off the morning by walking another two miles to get our 8 miles. 

Bob