A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE RUNNERS, WALKERS, AND VOLUNTEERS!!!!

The First Annual Colorado Springs Ugly Christmas Sweater Fun Run and Walk is now part of running history!!! Despite frigid temperatures, 166 brave runners and walkers showed up to be part of Colorado's first Ugly Christmas Sweater Fun Run and Walk, on December 3rd, 2011! A huge thank you to all of you, and I am already working on making next year's event even better!


A little history about how this run came into existence:

Once upon a time, there was a delusional female runner who liked to do all sorts of off the wall running related things, and often talk her husband and friends into joining her. Being an insomniac, (which is good if you run ultramarathons through the night) she found herself watching reruns of classic Saturday Night Live skits one night around Christmas. The next day, as she was running with a friend, scenes of Schwetty's ball's, with Alec Baldwin on PBS, kept floating through her mind. It was hard to get the images of him being interviewed about his "balls" by two women wearing ugly Christmas Sweaters. Then it dawned on the delusional female runner: why not create a race wear people run in ugly Christmas Sweaters!! My friend had that look on her face that said,"are you serious?"

Seeing it as an opportunity to not only do something I love, but also a potential to raise money for a worthy charity, I drove home, calling my husband to tell him the "good news."


"Honey, guess what?! We're going to be race directors again!!"

Silence on the other end.

"No, seriously, lets go to Manitou tonight, and map out a course, and post it on my blog, and invite all our friends!!"

Poor Tim. As always, he has a big heart and was a good sport, and obliged, perhaps secretly hoping that none of his military coworkers would find out he was involved in something so crazy. Nevertheless, he dug out his trusty GPS, and mapped out a course, and downloaded a map on our computer. I put up a story about my run on my personal blog (www.anitamariefromm.blogspot.com), and told everyone I could tell. Somehow, a reporter from the local paper found out about it, and asked if he could do a story on it.

"Sure!" I said. "We don't have any permits, and it is free, but I am going to turn it into an official event next year." And sure enough, he came out to meet with myself, a dear friend and husband, wearing an ugly Christmas sweater and ran the whole thing with us. It ended up on the front page of the local paper the next day.

Although we ran into some "snags" the following year,(pun intended) I didn't let excessive city fees, my husband's deployment, unexpected family deaths, computer breakdowns, and personal illness stop me. I cancelled the race for 2010, and put it on again in 2011, this time in Colorado Springs, where the city's fees were much less costly, and the Parks and Rec. Department was fabulous to work with! With a lot of hard work, and help from the Cerebral Palsy Association of Colorado Springs, who was the run's beneficiary, it finally got off the ground, becoming Colorado's first Ugly Christmas Sweater Fun Run and Walk. As I scour the internet to see if this idea has caught on, it certainly is! Ugly Sweater Runs are popping up all over the state and country. To all of them, I hope this idea will be as successful for you as it is for me, and that you too are able to raise money for a worthy cause in these most trying times.