so this past weekend was the spudfest celebration here in montrose, our second annual. pretty much everyone from this small community volunteers to help and i'm the organizer of the Spudfest 5k. being a people pleaser, my biggest concern was that people had fun and wanted to come again next year. i also had big fears about asking people to volunteer to help because races start early, and volunteers start even earlier. so, my help for mapping the route on the streets consisted of my neighbor and two first grade girls. let me tell you, our flowery purple and pink start and finish lines with hearts and exclamation points were something to see. i think we'll make it a tradition.
then, on race morning, people from all over the place started showing up about 7 am for an 8 am race, which kind of freaked me out. at that point, it was just me and my boys running around main street setting up the water station, time clock, tables and all the registration stuff. i'm sure they were thinking "ummm. seriously?"

by 7:30 we had a line. my neighbor and two friends saved me again at the registration table, and pretty quick we had 70 people lined up to run our colorful route. i decided to lead the race on my bike--i was afraid people would get lost (i decided to do that at 3 am the night before and it was a good call). the race went pretty fast, the winning guy ran it in 19:03 and the winning woman finished at 22:05. even little j and big j raced in the mile, and little j broke the 10 minute mark. his big brother was not far behind, but not at all happy about it. the biggest smile of my day came from my good friend and running partner, sara. we usually run together and finish at a pretty modest 27ish minute pace. she ran without me, and finished in 24 something minutes. obviously, i've been holding her back all this time. i'll either need to get me a new running partner, or find a fifth gear somewhere.

at any rate, the big spudfest started off a success in my book. next year i want music, t-shirts and a little more sleep the night before. :)