34th Annual Hospital Hill Run

As usual I’m a week late in taking this blog to press.

Last Saturday morning, June 2nd, I ran…err...okay…mostly walked in my first ever Hospital Run. I did the 5k. I had first thought about doing it when I received an email at school asking if I wanted to get on their training schedule. I said yes and then talked Dapple and a friend from Columbia into competing with me.

Of course I never got around to training, I just read the emails. So my goal was to finish within the time that you had to do to get a participation medal. Yes, I wanted that medal.

The week before the race Dapple pulled up lame while training on a six mile run. So she decided just to do the walk/run with me. I am happy to report that her training mate finished in the top twenty and Dapple and I both finished in time to get those medals. In fact, I had so much reserve that once I topped the last uphill stretch and it was all downhill I could have went faster. But we were enjoying the event so much that we had already decided to make it an annual thing. Our goal would be to beat our previous year’s time. So I decided to keep on pace as to not to get next years goal to high. How is that for a slackers reasoning.

If you have never ran the Hospital Run I highly recommend it. It was a very festive atmosphere. They even fed us pancakes after the race. As with most endeavors it has its own atmosphere, its own type of crowd, which was great fun to watch. It was definitely a healthier crowd than with I normally hang-out. More energy bars and bottled water and less bar-b-que sandwiches and bottles of beer

The highlight of the morning was seeing an Iraqi vet, Sergeant Bruce Dunlap, finish the race. He had ran the race five previous times, and was wounded this winter in Iraq. After being released from Walter Reed on Friday he came to Kansas City to compete in a wheelchair on Saturday. His courage and bravery was overwhelming and had nothing to do with politics other than to magnify the false bravado of our President’s ridiculous decision to invade Iraq.