The Agony and the Donut: A Report from the Palmer Lake .5K

It has been a slow news week in the Tri-Lakes, so The Monument Independent sent its most expendable correspondent to the Palmer Lake .5K, a 546-yard charity “run” with a donut at the halfway mark and a beer at the end, and is trying its hand at satire. Readers who came for zoning will find there is zoning in it anyway.

The Palmer Lake .5K is half a kilometer long. Awake Palmer Lake, the volunteer group that puts it on, bills it as “the ‘run’ for absolutely everyone.” On Sunday, Oct. 18, for the 12th year, everyone came.

The field

Woodrow Moorhouse, the Mayor of Woodmoor, warmed up alone on the east shore, in silence, for 40 minutes. Woodmoor is unincorporated and has no mayor. Moorhouse has held the office since 2019, when he noticed the vacancy.

He is a serious man, and his training is serious. He chases bears out of trash cans. He checks doors. In August Woodmoor Public Safety reported 1,919 property checks; Moorhouse says he rechecks every one of them at night, “to keep the officers honest,” and runs between them. He credits the rest to the local tap water, which the water district said in August had taken on an earthy, musty taste from an algal bloom and was entirely harmless. “Other communities have water,” Moorhouse said. “We have character.” He was aiming, he said, for the top 60.

Gary Thistle introduced himself as the Town of Monument’s ordinance officer, a post he has held, he explained, “in spirit.” He had come straight from Home Place Ranch, where he spent much of the summer enforcing Monument’s weed code, which treats growth above nine inches as a nuisance. The weeds there passed nine inches some time ago. “Head-high, in places,” Thistle said. “I went in after a Preble’s meadow jumping mouse in June and came out in August.” The mouse is a federally threatened species. Thistle has never seen one. “That’s how you know it’s there,” he said. He planned a conservative race and a thorough one. He had brought a tape measure.

Peregrine Ashworth-Lisle, Director of the Archives at the Lucretia Vaile Museum, ran in tweed. He holds a doctorate from Oxford and asked to be addressed accordingly, which this newspaper’s style forbids and which he took bravely. The museum occupies the lower level of the Palmer Lake library. Ashworth-Lisle describes its archive as cavernous. “One does not simply pop down to the archive,” he said. “One provisions. I have been lost in the 1970s for days at a time.” He did not expect the distance to trouble a man who regularly crosses from the Chautauqua material to the Denver & Rio Grande, “a journey of 11 feet, but a long 11 feet.” The real historical society has said it would like more display and working space. Ashworth-Lisle, who is not real, would like the same, “ideally a wing.”

At the front of the start line stood Winthrop Finley Thompson V, who describes himself as the great-great-great-grandson of William Finley Thompson, the Baltimore dentist credited with founding Palmer Lake and elected its first mayor in 1889. He had come to reclaim the mayoralty, which he says passes “by blood, and by molar.” His evidence, a family tree drawn on a single index card, has not been reviewed by anyone. Palmer Lake chooses its mayor by election. “A technicality,” he said.

Zagel Jackson, 15, rolled to the line in a racing wheelchair that, over 546 yards of flat path, made him the overwhelming favorite. He was not thinking about the race. He was thinking about Jay-Z, whose company helps the NFL choose the Super Bowl halftime act, and about whether Jay-Z should choose himself. “Structurally, it’s the most important decision in rap since ‘The Blueprint,’” Jackson said. “If he books himself, that’s the ultimate flex. If he doesn’t book himself, that’s an even bigger flex, because he could have. That’s the paradox. Nobody wants to talk about the paradox.” Two days after the race, Puck reported that Jay-Z had picked himself for February’s game. Jackson has declined to take credit, though not firmly.

Jean Perez, 16, is a soccer player, and would like that on the record. She was at the .5K to save the turtles and to tell people about Pressed for Time, the press-on nail business she runs from her bedroom and describes as “basically a lifestyle.” She wore a scrunchie on each wrist and carried a water bottle under 31 stickers, one of which read “save the turtles.” She described her look as VSCO, after the photo app, and her prices as “honestly so reasonable.” The race raises money for Awake Palmer Lake’s work on the town’s parks, its trails and the lake. Asked which of those were the turtles, Perez said, “And I oop,” and the interview was over.

Arch “Mallard” Aplund III, founder of Duc-ee’s, the duck-themed travel-center chain, flew in from Eugene, Oregon, to get to know the people of Palmer Lake, whom he called “future guests.” He hopes to build a Duc-ee’s resort on the shore of the lake, with 240 fueling positions, spotlights that run all night “so the lake can finally see itself,” and a deer feeding station from which hunters, for a fee, may take a deer and have it prepared on a hibachi inside the store. “Farm to table,” he said, then corrected himself. “Meadow to hibachi.” He ran in a duck costume and handed every runner a coupon for Duck Nuggets.

County Commissioner Kerry Geltner ran in a white shirt covered, NASCAR-style, in the logos of her sponsors: Sprawlstone Homes, Bulldoze Brothers Grading, Cul-de-Sac Capital, Duc-ee’s and Vortex Engineering, among others. By the Independent’s rough measurement the logos covered 68 percent of the shirt, a figure that struck this newspaper as familiar for reasons it could not place.

Pat Runston, a developer, did not register. He was on the course early anyway.

The donut

The donut station sits at the halfway mark, 273 yards in. This year it was sponsored by Vortex Engineering, whose banner read: “We Will Build. We Don’t Care What It Is.” The firm’s staff, former county officials who once wrote the rules on what counts as a donut, assured runners that everything on the table met the definition, which they had also written. A speaker played the Counting Crows’ cover of “Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell’s song about a parking lot, on a loop. Asked whether the song was meant ironically, a Vortex representative said the firm does not do irony, “but we could build you one.”

At 10:30 the field set off. Thompson V took the lead and held it all the way to the donut station, where he stopped. As the heir to a dental dynasty he could not, in conscience, eat a donut without brushing afterward, and brushing takes two minutes. He brushed for two minutes. He then flossed, tooth by tooth, describing each tooth to the Vortex staff, who said they would look into building him one. By the time he had finished, the entire field had passed him, including a basset hound in a bandanna and the Mayor of Woodmoor, who checked the station’s door on the way through. Thompson V finished last. He has since announced that the mayoralty will be decided by dental records.

The signs

Somewhere past the donut, the course changed. Runners found the arrows pointing up a hillside, where Pat Runston had replanted them overnight in the direction of a parcel he described as “perfect for 600 homes, maybe 700.” About a third of the field followed them and received, unasked, a site tour, with renderings. Confronted at the finish, Runston said he had mistaken the course arrows for opposition yard signs. “Force of habit,” he said. To make amends he offered to donate land for a tree nursery off Highway 83, an offer that surprised anyone who has ever suggested a tree nursery to a developer. Runston said he has always loved trees, “as a concept.”

Ashworth-Lisle followed the arrows, then a hunch, and finished by a route he described as “via the Rio Grande.” He declined to give a time, on the ground that time is a construct the archive largely abandoned in 1996.

Jackson stopped 12 yards from the line to explain the difference between a flow and a cadence to a volunteer, and remained there, by the Independent’s count, for 41 minutes. He crossed only when the volunteer agreed that “Reasonable Doubt” was the better album, which she says she did so she could go home.

Perez outran nearly everyone, recording it for her followers, then ran back to the donut and recorded it again from a better angle. She stopped once more at the water’s edge to look for turtles. She did not find any. “They’re shy,” she said. “It’s giving introvert.”

Moorhouse finished 57th. He called it his best result since 2019 and gave the final 40 yards to the water.

The beer

The race ends, as it does every year, at beer and root beer. This year it also ended in an argument. Geltner, offered a cup, told the volunteer checking IDs that this was “not an R-rated movie.” Words were then exchanged with a man from Black Forest over whether the cup in her hand was hers or his. “It is my cup,” Geltner said, and then, to the tent at large, “Property rights.” She said it again, louder. “Property. Rights.” She said it, by one count, 14 more times, in capital letters. She observed that the tent was behaving like a high school classroom and that she used to teach. The man from Black Forest got another cup.

Aplund III, watching, said Duc-ee’s would never allow such a scene. “Our tents,” he said, “will have spotlights.”

Missing

At the finish, officials could not account for Thistle. He was last seen at about the 200-yard mark, kneeling beside a patch of grass with his tape measure, saying “nine and a quarter.” Volunteers who walked the course found grass, the tape measure and no officer. He has been recorded as DNF. Monument, which has no ordinance officer, has not reported one missing.

The after-party, in the organizers’ words, “continues until we run out of beer, root beer, and donuts.” It did. Thistle’s tape measure is at the lost and found.

Unofficial results (entirely made up)

The real Palmer Lake .5K posts no official results: its registration page lists none for this year’s race or last year’s, and its prizes go to the best outfit, the best costume and the best attitude. Awake Palmer Lake says the proceeds go to the town’s parks, its trails and the lake. Everything in the table above is invented, as is everyone in it.

Sources & further reading

None of the following Independent reports was consulted in the preparation of this article: The Palmer Lake .5K Returns October 18 · Woodmoor’s Musty Water and the Renewable-Water Project It Now Plans Alone · Woodmoor Public Safety’s August: 87 Calls and 1,919 Property Checks · Home Place Ranch: Who Runs the Ranch · The Palmer Lake Historical Society Turns 70 · Vertex Consulting Files Its Rezonings With the Department It Came From · Eight Hours at Centennial Hall: How Buc-ee’s Won Its Appeal · Choose Wisely · After the Denial: What the County’s Vote Does — and Doesn’t — Settle.

The real race: Awake Palmer Lake · Registration page, RunSignup.

Satire · For fun, not news

The Monument Independent holds no office, keeps no stopwatch and makes no claim that any of this happened, except the donut.

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