67. Reindeer Run, 2011

The Reindeer run is a can’t-miss event for the Holy City, with all sorts of costumes and decorations on people and dogs. (Especially on dogs.) It starts downtown at Southend Brewery, sweeping through the city and along the Battery before returning. It might be the most enjoyable race in town.

I was doing this one alone since Cara is in Vermont now. I can’t join her until my contract is complete at the end of the year, so I thought I would use the time to get back into Charleston and do some things/see some folks before returning to Burlington.

The plan was pretty simple. Hang out with my brother on Friday night, race on Saturday morning, head back in the afternoon. Oddly enough, things went 90% according to plan. The only hitch was my Garmin watch… again.

Garmin Woes

I’ve had plenty of trouble with my Garmin in the past year. I’ve forgotten to turn it on and I’ve even forgotten to bring the damned thing at all. Twice. This time I made sure it was on my wrist and charged up, so I thought I was safe. I even remembered to turn it on a couple of minutes from the start. I chatted with other folks in the crowd as it searched for satellites, and searched, and searched… and then the race started.

That little sucker just kept on searching as I ran. It was having far more trouble than it should, and it eventually explained why. It asked me if I were indoors. No, dumbass! And then it asked if I were 100 miles or more from my previous location.

Uh… well, yeah. Charleston is about 100 miles from Columbia. Aw, crap. Of course.

So I just let it run. At that point, I just wanted to know if it would find me at all before I stopped. To its credit, it did. It located me somewhere near the end of the second mile. Be sure to check out the full page for my Garmin map on this one. The red line is where I actually was, but on the full page you can see some little greet dots from when it was guessing. The little guy thought I was in West Ashley at one point.

The Awesome Bits

The race was simply fantastic race and there were bunches of wonderful costumes.

Besides all that cool stuff, I managed to catch up with Paul, Joanie and Feris! I was a little bummed about how much I’ve missed in Charleston since I’ve been gone, but it was good to see some old friends again. I wish I could do this race every single year.  🙂

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