New Year’s Revolution Run

Leslie Petersen convinced me to sign up for the New Year's Revolution Run. This race was held on the track around the speed skating track at the Olympic Ice Oval in Kearns. I have run there plenty, but this was my first race at this location.

The group that put the race on (this was its first year) was hoping for 500 runners. I was hoping they wouldn't meet that goal because that is a lot of bodies on a fairly small track and would have been very crowded. Luckily only about 250 people registered.

Another running friend, Rachel Moody, was really bummed because she broke her right foot the day or two before Christmas and was 13 miles short of her running goal of 2011 miles in 2011. I encouraged her to find a knee scooter and one of her neighbors had one that she could borrow – so she ended up coming after all.

We picked up our packets around 7 a.m. on December 31^st. Back to the old style leg chip to count laps, but I brought along my lap counter because I wanted to know how many laps I had done. My goal was somewhere between 16-20 miles in the four hours the race would be open. The purpose was to see how many laps you could run in a four hour period.

Shortly after 8 a.m. the race started and the gerbil imitation got going. I was passed a lot, but also passed other people. For the first hour I pretty well ran non-stop except for one lap walking with Rachel. She was using a lot of new muscles on the scooter and would scoot several laps and then walk a lap to give her muscles a break. I thought it very admirable that she was even trying to get her mileage in.

I'd say hi to Leslie each time I passed her and we would usually run a lap together (or walk it later on). After the first hour I would run 4 laps, then walk a lap and each hour I dropped the number of laps prior to walking. I could feel the hard surface of the track tightening up my back as the time dragged on, but kept on as best I could.

It was interesting to watch Seth Wold run by me constantly in his Altra's. He ended up doing something like 115 laps – incredible! When I mentioned prior to the race that I had two pairs of Altra's – he gave me a shirt and I wore it during the race.

Other than two long bathroom breaks for stomach issues, I kept going the entire time. Ran the last 30 minutes in socks to give my feet a break from shoes. I ended up with 63 laps for a total of 18 miles. Nice way to end out the running year.