A Memorial Day Run

Last night I set my alarm on vibrate so that I wouldn’t wake my husband up. Inevitably, I woke up before it went off, and with one eye open and one eye shut, tried to manipulate the buttons on my phone to turn it off. I thought I had it figured out, but either because of the fact that I wasn’t wearing my glasses or due to the early hour, it went off at 5:15 anyway. I switched it off, with my glasses on and so less blind this time, and went out into the kitchen to start making coffee.

I don’t own a coffee maker. My mom brought her Keurig, one of those fancy things that makes one cup at a time. I heated up water for tea for myself, and made my brother a cup of Starbucks instant mocha with about a tablespoon of sugar and ¼ of a cup of milk. Then I poked at the Keurig to make my mother a cup, brought it to her, then confiscated it again to give it to my father instead. I made her a second one with less water, since she likes a stronger cup of coffee than my father anyway. My brothers chomped into a loaf of banana bread, and my dad paced around the apartment, getting warmed up.

At the traffic light waiting to turn off of Jay Road onto the Diagonal Highway, my brother called out, “Prius!” “Where?” my mother asked. “Wait for it...” he said, and ten seconds later one zipped through the green light on the highway. “How did you see that?” she asked, craning her neck to look around the front seat. “I didn’t,” he replied, laughing, and we high-fived. People up here love their eco-friendly Toyotas.

I had been a little concerned about the traffic, even at 6 AM, but it wasn't a problem; we waited a reasonable amount of time to get around the corner onto Arapahoe, and by 6:25 the passengers had exited my tiny Volkswagen Golf.

The Bolder Boulder is one of the largest road races in the world, with over fifty thousand participants, run every year since 1979 on Memorial Day in Boulder, Colorado. It’s a big production for only ten kilometers. Runners and spectators are shuttled in from surrounding areas, even as far away as Denver, which is an hour's drive away. Boulder might be a well known place, but it’s really not that big: it covers barely more than 24 square miles.

Going for a Memorial Day Walk is a family tradition. We didn’t plan it that way, but it just happened that for a couple of consecutive years, on Memorial Day, my father just happened to fancy a stroll, and before we knew it, we would have wandered halfway across the city. Some years we were just on foot, others we had a bicycle along, or a pair of rollerblades that would get passed around between my brothers and I. Lincoln is quite a bit larger than Boulder, covering around 75 square miles, so it was usually quite a jaunt.

It may have been a longer walk in Lincoln than the run is in Boulder, but the effort involved is similar because of the difference in elevation. The Bolder Boulder online store sells a shirt that displays the fact that “Sea Level is for Sissies.” Boulder, in the shadow of the Rockies, is 5,430 feet above sea level, while Lincoln is only 1,176 feet above sea level. I asked my father whether he could feel the difference. “It was definitely dragging me down,” he replied.

He didn’t look tired at the finish. He rocked the last 200 meters or so with his arms up in the air, victorious. Unfortunately, he was too far away to hear my brother shout, “WE WIN!”

Best Memorial Day Walk (Run) ever.