Pat's Run

On Saturday, April 19th, I was able to participate in the 4th annual Pat's Run held in Tempe, Arizona. This race is held in honor of Pat Tillman who was killed while serving our country as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. Pat spent his college years at Arizona State University and later played for the Arizona Cardinals. He turned down a contract extension with the Cardinals, choosing instead to serve in the military with his brother. Because Pat wore #42 when he played for the Sun Devils, the race is 4.2 miles (participants were separated by those who wanted to have a timed run and those who wanted to have an untimed walk/run) and the finish line is on the 42 yard line of Sun Devil Stadium.

The event was well-attended; I think they had over 15,000 people who participated in the run and walk portions of the race. My brother Shad also participated in the race - he works for State Farm and they sponsored a team so he was able to run for free. (In the above picture, you can see both of us crossing the Start line. We are both wearing dark shirts and red shorts.)

As you can imagine, the start of the race was really packed - I don't think we moved for the first couple minutes after the gun sounded. I ran a pretty good race although most of the time was spent navigating around slower runners (next year I'll try to get closer to the front). I finished in 32:48 which was 733 place out of 7,448 runners. Shad finished a little behind me and we met up with Camille, Tanner and Trevor who came out to cheer us on to the finish.

We visited many of the booths and games that were set up for the race participants and spectators. We hung around mainly because there was a kids race that Tanner had signed up to run. Tanner was smarter than Shad and I because he got right up in front for his race (the kids race was .42 miles and again finished in Sun Devil Stadium on the 42 yard line). There were over 1,200 kids who participated in the race and Tanner finished 3rd!! Below is a picture of Tanner jockeying for position at the start of the race (he has the red & yellow face paint on his cheek) and another of Tanner after finishing.

There are more great pictures of Tanner and I during the race if you go to http://www.patsrun.com/ and search by our bib numbers (mine was 1436 and Tanner's was 1017).