This 3-mile run around Bisbee's old stairs is such a fun event. Every third Saturday in October this event takes place. With today's warmer-than-usual temperatures and sunny skies it was an especially well-attended event.
But in some ways it wasn't as well organized as it could have been. Granted, I didn't pre-register for this event, paid $50 (!) to participate, and for that price I got a bib number that had been replicated, and the man who wore the other bib number by the same number (1755) got to wear the chip timer. For $50 I got three gulps of water, an apple and half a banana. And because I didn't get a chip timer, I ran without an official time. If I wanted an event t-shirt I would have had to pay an additional $15. No thanks!
Volunteers work hard for this special events so I'm not going to pounce on them, but the organizers did run out of water at the finish line. If participants wanted to eat anything substantial after the event, they were strongly encouraged to buy stuff from the Bisbee market, where Budweiser sold for $3 a plastic cup. (Even Chuck, one of the organizers, said to the crowd "You can't be magnetic and drink Bud!")
There was a large turn-out for this run. The three-mile course runs through Old Bisbee and targets the five longest stair climbs, thus the name of this event. (Although only about 15% actually goes to maintaining the historic stairs, most monies collected go toward the Boys and Girls Club of Bisbee and for the all-male drug detox center south of town.) This is my fourth Bisbee 1000 and I've yet to see ANY improvements on the old crumbling stairs around Old Bisbee.
The growing number of participants is now causing bottlenecks at every stair climb. At the second climb off Main Street one of the volunteers yelled at us to "Move Over!" but on the narrow stairs there wasn't much room to "move over" for the faster climbers on the left.
We jogged, walked and ran all over the ridges of Bisbee. Local musicians got out and played their music for us, some of which was quite good: blues, rocky tunes and bluegrass were dominant styles. A local band, "Train Wreck" played old rock and blues tunes at the finish area by the old Courthouse, where the old Bisbee Market pushed its food and drinks on people. I didn't buy anything because of the high entrance fee for this event.
This run reminds me of a smaller version of the San Francisco Bay-to-Breakers event, although here in conservative southern Arizona you wouldn't see naked old men running down the street because the Arizona Rangers and Sheriff deputies would arrest those in a nano-second. There were a few costumed groups today, the pink Mashed Potato Ladies and the Caped Crusaders out of Tuscon, of which one well-built man was docked in leopard leggins and leopard Speedos with a US flag draped around him.
There were many joggers and walkers who finished almost an hour after I was done, and I walked around the event area to watch people, video some of the cooler sites, and listen to "Train Wreck," a local blues-rock band. A group of nurses dressed in blue t-shirts danced a few nice scores with the enthusiasm of a homecoming cheer-leading team. They were fun to watch.
A woman right behind me near the courthouse square went into an epileptic seizure. The paramedics were right there to tend to her and she was taken away quickly by ambulance. She was still in seizure mode when she was taken away.
I didn't run fast at all. Some of the nine-year-old girls ran faster than I did, but I wasn't expecting to break any records since I haven't trained for this nor have I been jogging like I used to. But I did better than expected although my lungs still gave out after a few steep stairs. Which has me wondering if my doctor is right when he surmised that I may have late-onset asthma? I didn't have this trouble before going to Iraq.
I stayed in town till the awards were passed out. The youngest participant was a five-year-old boy, the oldest was a 79-year-old man although there were many 70-something-year-old women who weren't recognized. The farthest person traveled claimed he was from Vermont, although he looked suspiciously like an active-duty officer stationed at nearby Fort Huachuca.
I didn't come back home till 1:30pm feeling beat. Will I do this event again next year? Maybe, but only as a pre-register because $50 for day-of-event registration is rather steep.
No comments:
Post a Comment