Colfax Half Marathon

Well this post a quite a bit late but I thought I would put it up anyways just to get caught up on my running and training.

As I have mentioned in the past my dad was very influential in me running. He had been running for quite a while and as part of our bonding we began to run/hike together.

It had been sometime since he and I ran in race together. So we signed up for the Colfax Half-Marathon. Prior to this race we began training together. I'm the kind of guy who would rather run alone. I think it has to do with the combination of: running with no pressure, running when I feel like it and having my quite time with God.

Training with my dad really helped me gain speed though. I had been running hard on my own, but running with him on our 9 mile trail training runs, really pushed me. When I wanted to give up, and he did not let up, it forced me to have to run harder. It really helped.   I went from about a 12:00 min/mile to about 10:30 min/mile.
 

The Expo

I loved the fact that the EXPO was at Sports Authority Field at Mile High (Denver Broncos Stadium). I have been a life long fan of the Denver Broncos and this was my first time being there. So needless to say I was pretty excited!!

After taking a bunch of pictures on the outside we made our way to the Expo. Once inside it was a little bit confusing to get around. The Bib pick up was on one side of the expo and the shirt pick up was on the complete other side. This was a good marketing scheme. It ensured that every vendor had people passing by. The unintended result was lost of crisscrossing traffic.

Other than that the expo was fun and I walked away with some cool stickers and some other free stuff.

The Start

I am never myself until I make it to the start line. Until then I am so very uneasy. Once I made it to my corral I was calm and ready to go. I was way in the back because my estimated time was 2:30:00.

So as a result I had a 20 minute wait from when corral A started. All in all it was a pretty smooth process. One minor nuance was the music. There were speakers set up though the corrals ever 20 feet, and as they walked us forward every so often you had to stand for a few minutes by one of those speakers. The music was so loud as you passed the speaker I had to plug my ears.

The Zoo

Just a few miles into this race we had the awesome privileged of running through the Denver Zoo! This reminded me a lot of my most recent run the Disney World Marathon. 

We got to run though most of the exhibits. It really was a fun twist to this race.

The Mid Miles

Most of the miles of this race where down residential streets. We got to see some pretty nice homes. It was a nice peaceful run.

At about mile 10 or so we made the turn on to the busy street of Colfax. This was a nice change of pace, but it was also a little strange because only one side of the street was closed. So we had cars on the oncoming lane staring at us.  But once you get past the stares it was nice to know that we were almost done.

Aurora Fire Station 1

Another cool feature of this race was to run though station 1 in Aurora. I yelled to the guys, "Are you hireing." Being a fire fighter is 

The Finish

Finally at last I made to the last mile. I was starting to recognize things. I was not far away. I began to speed up a bit. I was still not quite sure of the exact location of the finish line so I ran hard, but then backed off a little so I could save some energy for the finish line.

I was so happy to have this race done. I trained hard, and ran hard. I was very pleased with my time.I had a 20 minute PR. In these pictures you can see me raise my arms saying "Thank You Lord". 

All in all this was a very fun race. It was well stocked and well organized. Next time I want to run the full marathon and run all around Denver and the run through the Denver Broncos stadium!!