It’s over. The 30th running of Bloomsday is history. Today is the Monday after Bloomsday, and once again, I finished the course in less than two hours – my goal for this year. Last year I said I was going to train for this year’s run and finish closer to 90 minutes. That was not to be. I’m in worse shape this year than I was last year, and yet I finished in pretty much the same time. I can’t complain about that. I guess it also goes to show (me, you?) that I can push myself when I want to, and that I’m probably not in as bad shape as I think I am. I ran (yes, I actually did run some of it) with my daughter and her friend. They are 29 and 26. I think my daughter could have finished 5 or 10 minutes ahead of me, but she wanted to have fun, and that meant sticking with her old mom. What a sweetheart! One thing did slow us down – my daughter’s friend had to use the bathroom. She had done so just before the race started, but here she was, just about 2 miles into the race, and she had to go again – bad. So, we had to stop and wait for her to stand in a long line to go pee. That added almost 4 minutes to our time. So, official time of 1:50, actual time, about 1:46, which is comparable to last year’s time.
A big part of running Bloomsday is, of course, getting the t-shirt. The color and design are a closely guarded secret. Part of the fun for us slowpokes is looking to catch a glimpse of the shirt on someone who has finished well ahead of you. That usually happens around mile 6. Sure enough, as we hit the 6 mile marker, I spied someone who was obviously a participant in what looked to be an ugly pumpkin colored shirt. I told the girls “the shirt is orange”. They didn’t believe me. Around the next corner there were three or four finishers wearing their shirts standing along the side of the road. Yep, it was an ugly rusty orange. Actually, kind of the color of pumpkin pie. And the design on the front is ugly. This is the 30th Bloomsday. You’d think it’d be splashed all over the front of the shirt. It’s in tiny print at the bottom of this ugly tall skinny rectangle with an abstract rendition of a lilac bush and a runner in it. Ugliest shirt ever, in my opinion. But I’ll be wearing it, like a badge of honor, to work today, as will most everyone who ran yesterday. It’s tradition.
Though rain was forecast, and though it was raining on the trip over from Sandpoint to Spokane, and even in the eastern part of Spokane, it did not rain during the race. It sprinkled lightly a couple of times, but not enough to make a bit of a difference. As it turned out, the weather was perfect for running. As soon as we finished, we walked straight to the Olive Garden in downtown Spokane, as is our tradition. There was no line, nothing. We got a table right away and sat our weary bodies down. I was not the least bit hungry, so I had soup and salad only. The girls had big meals – stuffed chicken marsala for my daughter and Portobello ravioli for her friend. They were stuffed. I felt perfect. Getting up to leave was tough though. The muscles had stiffened and it was all I could do to get the appropriate parts to move freely. On the way home, the girls decided we should stop at Dairy Queen for a Blizzard – another tradition. This time I let them go in without me. I had no desire for a Blizzard. If I was going to run off several hundred calories, I was not going to eat them back on immediately afterward. Both of them got about halfway through their Blizzards and regretted not having just shared one between them. It rained like crazy on the way home. Never did rain in downtown Spokane. I slept like a rock last night and awoke not nearly as sore as I thought I’d be. Next year, I do have to get in better shape before the race and really try to do it in closer to 90 minutes.
Now, for a little intrigue and mystery. As we were walking along the Centennial Trail, (a path along the Spokane River that actually runs all the way into Coeur d’Alene from downtown Spokane) heading to the convention center to pick up our race numbers and the nifty little RFID chip that we were to strap to our ankles and which would give us each our own, accurate finishing time (new to the race this year), we saw a cell phone in the ivy in a landscape border that separated the Marriot Courtyard hotel from the path. My daughter picked it up and handed it to me. I turned it on and saw it worked perfectly. I decided to call the last number dialed and find out whose phone it was so we could get it back to the owner. A girl answered saying “Alex!” I told her that we had just found the phone and asked her who it belonged to. She said it belonged to her friend, Alex, and she’d been trying to reach him. We talked about options for getting it back to him, but no plan was decided upon. I looked at his list of recent calls. He’d madly been dialing family and friends from about 2:30 a.m. until almost 3 a.m. It didn’t appear he’d gotten a hold of anyone by the length of the calls. The girl I’d called said she was worried. He’d tried to call her multiple times. I finally decided to call the listing that said “Dad” since he’d tried to call “Dad” at 2:40 a.m. Turned out Dad was on his way to run Bloomsday too. But the fact that I had Alex’s phone, and we’d found it alongside the river, scared him. He asked me to hang on to the phone and we’d keep in touch. I had to call him on my phone because Alex’s phone was almost dead. Dad made several calls. I tried to get more info from Alex’s phone by looking at text messages he’d sent and received, etc. While I was looking at Alex’s phone, it rang. I answered it and told the caller what the deal was. The caller was a friend and knew who Alex was with the night before. He said he’d start calling around and he’d call Dad. Now everyone is getting really worried. Apparently, Alex has his jaw wired shut and, according to Dad, shouldn’t be out drinking (my first assumption was he’d been drunk and lost it), but then, we all know how our kids do things they shouldn’t do (does the name Jonathan ring a bell?). So, as I’m waiting at the start of Bloomsday, Dad is frantically looking for Alex. He calls every few minutes to ask me questions like where exactly did we find it, was it where it might have fallen off the overpass? (no), how close to the river was it? I knew what he was thinking – the same things I’d be thinking if it were my kid, the same things I was worried about myself for this kid. Finally, Dad decided he’s going to forego Bloomsday and keep looking for his kid. Turns out, he was out drinking with his friends, got separated from them, and was walking around in a drunken stupor alone. Now we’re all worried. Dad calls and decides to meet me along the Bloomsday course and get Alex’s phone. About three or four blocks into the race, I see Dad talking to me on his phone describing himself. I give him the phone, ask him to please let us know what happens, and tell him we’ll be praying for him and Alex. So, we run, worrying and wondering about Alex.
After the race, once we order our food at the Olive Garden, I call Dad. He starts off by thanking me for finding the phone, for making such a concerted effort to get it back to Alex, and for calling him. He has just retrieved Alex from Taco Bell about a mile or so from where we found the phone. Apparently, Alex was robbed. He was beaten up some too, but was okay. His dad didn’t go into much detail. He’d only had Alex for about 15 minutes. He said Alex would call me in a couple of days to thank me. I asked how old Alex was. 21. Of course. I’m sure Alex is not too happy with me. He’s probably glad I found his phone, but now his dad knows about his night, and he probably would have rather told his dad about it at his convenience as opposed to have a frantic dad, friends, mother, and half the world looking for him. I don’t know yet where he spent the night, how he got to Taco Bell, or how his phone got separated from him and in the bushes by the Marriot (did the thieves toss it there? Did he lose it?) but I’m definitely going to ask Alex to fill me in when he does call. So, that was our dramatic back story as we ran Bloomsday. Thankfully, Alex is okay and not floating in the Spokane River, as was our deepest fear. Maybe this will be a wake-up call to Alex as to how he should spend his Saturday nights. We’ll see. After all, he is only 21.
