Looking to boost our dreadful preregistration numbers for our local 4-H 5k, I’d recruited a handful of walkers from the agency for intellectually disabled adults where I’ve been working the last few months.
I wasn’t really sure how long it might take them to finish the race, or whether they’d even make it. The timing crew allowed them to start half an hour early, so there wouldn’t be such a big gap between the frontrunners and the back of the pack.
But as it turned out, our walkers from Bi-County Services finished in 61 minutes, about a minute ahead of the last two finishers.
I’ve seen frequent winner Kevin Moser at several area races the last few years, but it wasn’t until this week that I realized he’s the son of one of my co-workers, Blanca.
What made it even better was that the winner of the event, a former local cross country star, is the son of one of our agency’s employees, so he graciously consented to having his photo taken with our walkers. (If I can track down a copy of that pic, I’ll post it later today.)
It was a huge relief that this event turned out so well. The timing crew told us beforehand that race numbers are down everywhere this summer. But we unexpectedly wound up with a respectable turnout after our race-day sign-ups literally doubled the size of the field. The only downside was that we ran out of T-shirts.
The unexpected good feelings generated from this event helped ease my disappointment from missing Friday night’s race in the Adams County 5K Challenge after pulling my hamstring earlier in the week. But it’s already starting to feel quite a bit better after taking a few days off, so I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to get right back at it soon.
