It’s been a week since the Garden of the Gods 10 Mile Run. It was a beautiful day! I finished in 1:37 which is about what I’d expected and slower than my potential. Training was slow in the weeks leading to the race. I’ve been battling the remnants of an ankle injury and was cautious leading to the race. Good news though! The ankle held strong and has been improving quite a bit since the race. I feel good moving forward to the Summer Roundup and the Ascent.

Race day was fun. Being a part of the Mighty Marmots is a blast. Tim Bergsten shot photos of us at the starting line and the team was in high spirits. Check out some of our team’s times on their blogs. Wow, we have some strong runners! It was a warm and sunny day with many familiar faces and great conversations. It’s inspiring to see over 1,000 people running together in our community. That is a lot of people getting up early and devoting their time to completing this special event.

Speaking of people volunteering to run long distances, I’ve been reading Born to Run (again) by Christopher McDougall. It’s an inspiring book touching on many subjects under the umbrella of why we are inclined to run. Much is learned from the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico, who are not influenced by the pressures of modern western culture. They run for survival AND pure enjoyment. A couple of paragraphs from the book:

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain.

Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we love – everything we sentimentally call our “passions” and “desires” – it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We’re all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.

These thoughts can help explain why 1,000 people would choose to band together in our community on a Sunday morning and why millions of people across our country choose to do so every year. In our cluttered daily lives filled with WAY too much work, media, politics, opinions, violence, etc. so many of us choose to run. It’s a simple act to connect us to what is important and ground us to our roots. Living in Colorado Springs we are very fortunate to have such natural beauty, a great trail and park system, and an amazing community of runners to share it with.

Happy running this week! The storm is passing this evening and the trails will be beautiful for a run in the morning!