(This is a week late, but I have been waiting to get a hold of some pics that I still have not been able to find… so… I post anyway!)

Last December I took my grandchildren to an event at my church! There was SNOW! They trucked in Snow! Or, they made Snow, I should say. There was also a ton of other stuff going on. They had everything but a race! So, I spoke with the Pastor and the leaders of the other organizations involved and got to work. Last Saturday, December 9 we had the 2nd annual Snow Daze Festival and the !st Annual Snow Daze Festival Races!

Being a High Desert Runners leader, I was thinking it would be nice to a a ONE MILE race in our Gran Prix Series. The streets next to the church are perfect for it. Nice and straight and flat. So I set up a 1 mile race. I was a bit afraid that there would be limited interest from the general public, however, so I also set up a 5k run. The course meandered through the neighborhood south of the Church between R and S and between 27th East and 30th East.

It worked, we had about 100 participants total. I timed it and produced the results myself. I have designed my own spreadsheet that can import entry info from another spreadsheet and calculate age group winners and everything. I just put my computer at the end of the finish chute and type in the bib numbers as they go by. I have a timer, use an app I found called Photo Stopwatch. It takes photos of the finishers and records the pictures with the times. The person operating the timer simply emails me the results. I copy/paste the times into the right column of my spreadsheet ant voila! I am Done! Well, I copy/paste one more time into an already published spreadsheet and people look up their results online!

As I said, it worked great….. but once again I have come up with a cool idea, a fun event…. and I don’t get to run in it… maybe next year!

CLICK THE PHOTO TO SEE PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT!