Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

out of scope

Breaking with sleep-in-until-noonish tradition, Rob and I got out of bed early this morning to walk in the Scope It Out 5K down by the Mall in DC. On the rare times we do these things, I’m always pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy them: It’s a chance to do something for a good cause (in this case, colon cancer research), take a brisk walk in the morning of a (usually) beautiful day and wander parts of D.C. we don’t ordinarily visit.

The participant field was a mix of walkers and serious runners. It was a smaller group than previous 5Ks I’ve done — I think the announcer said that they’d had 1,600 registrants this year — and it was actually nice not to have to contend with so many people. (In the Help the Homeless Walkathon, the race route is packed, and navigating around slower-moving groups becomes a bit of a challenge.)

The race route took us down Ohio Avenue from the Lincoln Memorial to East Potomac Park (about halfway to Hains Point, I think), with an abrupt U-turn at the mid-point. (Participants on the first half of the course took one side of the road, and folks finishing the last half of the race took the other side.) With impressive speed, the runners in the 5K made their way to the turnaround point and started to pass us even before we’d hit the 1-mile mark. (The winner finished the race in just over 15 minutes.) The people around me cheered for the first wave of runners as they passed us on their way to the finish line.

According to the race results, Rob and I finished the 5K in 50 minutes, 38 seconds, averaging 16 minutes, 18 seconds per mile — not too bad for walking. Hungry and thirsty — we’d started the day pretty unprepared — we took advantage of the fruit and water organizers had made available for participants at the finish line.

We capped our experience by walking through the Super Colon, a giant, inflatable replica of a human colon with larger-than-life examples of the signs of colon cancer. It was a bit surreal, but certainly memorable.