Shape shifter at the Autumn Color Half Marathon

For those of you who don't know my brother's history with athletics, I will do a quick re-cap:

Josh is 25, he was a football all american wide reciever and line backer in college, he can bench press your car, and one of his wide reciever hands is bigger than your entire head. Typically he is wearing a modest shirt but if you happen to catch him working out shirtless, he pretty much looks liks Arnold in Terminator 1. I had to look a bit to find this picture but this is what I'm talking about (guy on the left if you don't know Josh):

So now I'll get to the point: Can you picture Arnold running a half marathon? No way right? Way too much muscle to carry around for 13.1 miles of running. Isn't it?

A couple months ago Josh called me and told me he'd been running every day and that he was really enjoying it. At that point he was happy that he could run 3 miles non stop. We started running together about once a week. In almost no time he was able to run 4 miles non stop - then 5, then 7 then 9 then 12. Eventually we'd just get together and start running to the top of a mountain and then back down which, in a matter of words, is totally INSANE! It was remarkably fast progress for someone who had never done any endurance based athletics before and I loved having a dedicated training buddy!

With this progress we decided we needed to sign up for a half marathon together. A few weeks back we found one that sounded pretty cool in Buena Vista Colorado called the "Autumn Color Half Marathon". Fall colors, some trail running in a beautiful town. The weekend of the event Greg and Amy (my parents in law) were nice enough to host us at their vacation home in the nearby town of Salida.

The Autumn Color Half Marathon was this past Saturday and my bro and I showed up to the mountain town and kicked some butt!! It was a blast. We both finished in the 1 hr 30 minute range which is basically the pace that would qualify you for the Boston Marathon averaging about 7-ish minutes per mile. We were pretty pumped about this for a couple 200 lb clydesdale athletes!

So here is a recap of our weekend:

I picked up Julie up from the airport Friday evening. She was returning from a business trip to Salt Lake City. We headed straight from the airport to Salida to Greg and Amy's awesome vacation home.

Josh, mom and dad beat us there and were treated by Greg and Amy to a carbo-load pasta dinner consisting of the Reed family homemade italian pasta sauce which is quite frankly, the best pasta sauce ever. It was followed by really great apple pie for which I have no adjectives to adequately describe its deliciousness. Here is dad, dad in law, mom in law and julie having post dinner glass of wine at the kitchen bar.

After dinner it was off to bed. Josh and I had to be up at 6:00 AM to drive to buena vista to get our registration packets etc. My iphone alarm went off, had oatmeal, peach, coffee and juice and Josh and I headed out. It ended up being a nice sunny morning with the perfect amount of "cold bite" for a race.

In Buena Vista Josh and I boarded our shuttle bus which took us to the race start. Before the bus set off a really funny autistic kid boarded and introduced himself as "Harry Potter". He was a great comedian and had the entire bus laughing heartily within 2 seconds. He thanked us for racing becuase the race proceeds benefited the local group that worked with people challenged by autism. Harry Potter really put a face to the cause and made us feel even better about the race we had chosen to run.

The bus drove us 13 miles to the race start at cottonwood lake. I wish I had pictures of this. The fall colors were totally popping. The lake was completely still and gave an amazing mirror reflection of the autumn color mountains which made it look like the mountains extended both up and down, symetrically from an arbitrary horizontal line in the distance. The air was brisk and the slicing autumn light cut across the landscape in a way that creates shadows on every single object in view, including every single leaf on each tree. It was like looking at 1000 autumn color trees and actually being able to focus on each individual leaf becuase of the way they were defined by their own shadows. Then multiply that by two becuase of the lake reflection. My mind was saying: "YEAH BABY! I get the interact with this environment for the next two hours of running ahead!".

Every runner at the race start had a smile and was ready to get after it. Great energy.

The gun went off and it was on! Josh and I powered on the ipods and cranked it! There was a good amount of downhill in the first miles which meant we finished the first 3 miles in under 20 minutes (this is really fast). The first 8 miles passed in practically no time... The last 5 were a little rougher becuase the trail turned into a road which hurts more. At about mile 10 I was ready to be done but knew I had plenty left to finish the race graciously. Cruised down to the finish and had a great cheering squad of wife and parents on the final bend.

My finish with a celebratory bicep flex. The girls behind were probably racing the 5K or 10K (Just to set the record straight!)

Very shortly after Josh muscled his way to the end of mile 13

Now it's time to chill!

Josh thanking mom with a kiss for the "strong quads"

Talking about the course

Me and my Wife! Julie also brought the big guns Saturday and found us a great lead for my website at next years event.. She is so smart and tactful!
The fam! The cheering at the end took off at least 20 seconds for me! Big final motivator!
Thanks for coming out guys!

After the race we met at "Amica's" pizza restaurant in Salida which was really perfect. We tried every kind of beer they had on draught and ate back much more than the weight we sweat out on the run.

We then window shopped the various art studios in salida. Some really cool painters, glass workers, sculptors. lots of fun. There are many mountain towns in CO but Salida has a unique energy and character that is strong enough that you could actually live there as opposed to weekend visit. I think a lot of the town character is created from the energy of being situated on the Arkansas river and in the mountains. It is a perfect playground for anybody whether your play is fishing, biking, running, hiking, hunting, kayaking or just existing.. The result is that everybody in town is always happy.

Back at Greg and Amy's we "De-gamorrahed" which consists of post race shower to wash a perimiter of sweat salt off. We say "De-gamorrah" becuase Gomorrah is the town where the biblical characther, "lots wife", was turned to a pillar of salt. To "De-Gamorrah" (Amy's new verb) is to turn back to human from a pillar of salt. It was a good laugh for us as we ammended the incomplete language of English. :)

This post is called "Shape shifter" because Josh is a real athletic prodigy. In only 3 months he used his keen athletic insight to convert his football machine to a running engine. He shed a little size, trimmed up and got super lean. In doing so he was almost like the blue girl in x-men that can change shapes - converting himself from Arnold stature to Olympic decathlete stature and cranking out a half marathon for his first running event ever.

I have only one thing to say to competitive athletes of the world: You better hope this shape shifter doesn't choose to compete in your sport! He's already breathing down my back in just a couple months and I am anything but faint of heart!