Through events too complicated to explain here, I needed to run a 5K by the end of the month to get a break on my health insurance. The only one that fit into my schedule involved being chased by Big Foot through an obstacle course.

The Sasquatch Scramble benefited the Boulder Lake Environmental Learning Center — it’s out by Island Lake and you may know it for its lovely and free Nordic skiing or a place to pluck your own Christmas tree. It also hosts school kids for outdoor learning.

I’m not really a runner and certainly not a racer, so I don’t have lots of other events to compare it to — but I was utterly charmed. There was something completely homespun about it. Like the fact that the guy who drove the shuttle bus, also ran the bullhorn start, squirted the baby shampoo & hose down the 60ft water slide – and then 2K later, handed me my inner tube to paddle across the pond. Surely, there’s a small cadre of volunteers, but one can see there’s a lot of heart at its center.

There’s so many details to creating a race like this and they got so much of it right (though they could have used a port-a-john or two). The slide (made out of old billboard vinyls) had two lanes, there was a welcomed water station mid-course, and in the pond were several folks in kayaks to pluck out anyone that might fall off their tube. Even a photo cam.

Hardcore runners may be disappointed as it’s really more of a family fun run -that’s Kid 1 behind me in the first photo. Few participants seemed to care about times.

There were even a couple of folks in Sasquatch attire to pop out every now and again on the course — also available for photo ops with Kid 2.

I predict in five years this will be a huge event and part of me hopes I’m wrong. There’s something so “Hey! Let’s put on a show, gee Wilakers!” about it that I hate to see it overwhelmed with big corporate banners. I noticed this year’s sponsors — all three of them — were thanked on a chalk board at registration.

I hope they made some money because I sure had a good time.

I close with this inspirational running quote: Dance like no one is watching, Sing like there’s nobody listening and Run like there’s a Sasquatch chasing you.