One More Shot at Running


Somewhere around the middle of August 2008, after I had lost 15 or 20 pounds it occurred to me one day that maybe I ought to give running another try. I ran just a little bit at first, but this time around I could tell I was lighter and everything felt better. In just a few days I made more progress than I had back in March and I actually felt good for the first time in years.
I started thinking about that 5k I wanted to run with my daughter next year and thought that would be something great to train for. Somewhere I heard about a 5k race coming up in Hildebran, North Carolina, which is where my mother lived when she was young. The race was just a few weeks away (September 13th) and I didn’t know if I’d be ready for it but I was excited about the prospects of running it if I could.
For the next two weeks I worked on running the 5k distance (3.1 miles). My best time in March had been about 39 minutes, but just a couple days before the Hildebran 5k race I timed myself at about 29 minutes — 10 minutes faster than before!
Race day came and I was excited about it since I had never been in a race before. It was a perfect start for me. The race was tiny, with only 30 runners, but there was this small-town friendly atmosphere that I was glad to be a part of. When it was over I had finished 11th overall with a time of 27:56 and I was hooked on running.

Comments

Post a Comment

Recent Popular Posts

Race #214 - Mount Holly Springfest 5k - Mount Holly, NC - 05/04/13

Image
For the first time since last July I ran a 5k in under 21 minutes (20:58) so I was happy to know I still had a sub-21 in me at the age of 61. This race is just a few miles from my home and one of the few Gaston County races I had never run. It's a smallish race with 156 finishers this year, but there are a lot of good things about races this size: parking nearby, not losing your friends, a more casual starting line, etc. As I've been doing lately, I'll go light on the talking and let the photos tell the story since I wore my video glasses. Below is the video, followed by a few of the 100+ pictures I took. You can see all of the photos on my Facebook page. Click here for my Facebook gallery of this race. It was frigid for a race in May, when we expect springtime temperature. Bill refused to leave his car to warm up before the race. This was the first race I've been in with Dianne Allen in a while. She's coming back strong after an injury kep
Read more

Race #136 - The Scream! Half Marathon - Jonas Ridge, NC - 07/16/11

Image
The T-shirt says, The Scream! Half Marathon is "13.1 Miles of Pure Hill!" That's not entirely true. While there are probably 8 or 9 miles of downhill that will make your quads and calves scream with delight (or possibly horror), there's enough uphill to bring you back to reality. For me, every time we hit the small uphill sections they almost felt like huge mountains after getting used to all the downhill, but enough people passed me on those hills that I thought I might be in the minority. There's no doubt that the huge downhill sections helped a lot of people run their fastest half marathon time ever. I cut about a minute off my Personal Record from the 2010 Little Rock Half Marathon with a time of 1:32:11, which was 1st in the 55-59 age group and 24th overall. Honestly, I was just a little disappointed with my time since I've been running well lately and had dropped 10 pounds over the previous four weeks. I felt like there was a good chance for me to run
Read more

Race #143 - Midnight Flight 10k - Anderson, SC - 09/02/11

Image
This was my third straight year of running the Midnight Flight 10k, the first race in the Running Journal Grand Prix. After running a disappointing time of 47:07 in last year's race I hoped to redeem myself by running under 45 minutes this year. Things worked out well for me and I chopped about 4 minutes off last year's time, finishing in 43:09 (with a chip time of 43:04), finishing in 1st place in the 55-59 age group. It was a little sad not having some of the Charlotte area guys there who I've run the RJ Grand Prix with over the past two seasons, but a couple of other Charlotte runners are there this year -- Butch Holt and Louis Messina -- so we've still got some representation from the area. I'll be switching age groups on February 27, 2012, before the end of the current season, so the only points I'll get will be in races before that date. I told Linda last year that I wouldn't run this series this year, but since I'll still be eligible for point
Read more

Race #483 -- Kings Mountain Gateway Trail 5k -- Kings Mountain, NC -- 03/13/2021

Image
It's been a full year since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and with the hope that it's mostly behind us now the local races are starting to pop up along with the spring flowers. The Kings Mountain Gateway Trail is actually just over the county line in Cleveland County but this year the race marks the first entry for the Gaston County Race Series, which was canceled last year because of the virus but is being brought back this year, albeit with probably fewer races than in past seasons.  Since I'm a Gaston County resident and a runner, I've enjoyed supporting the race series and will continue to do so. During the last season (2019) of the race series I finished 2nd overall, partly due to some decent race times but more so due to showing up for pretty much every race. This year doesn't hold that much promise for me personally since I'm not running that well. Also, some of the races will be "virtual," meaning that you just run the race at a place and time of
Read more

Race #174 - New River Half Marathon - Todd, NC - 05/05/12

Image
Being a glutton for punishment, I was elated to hear the alarm go off at 3 a.m. Saturday morning. It wasn't so much the early wake-up time -- I try to get up a 4 a.m. every morning anyway. The day's punishment that I eagerly anticipated was the 13.1 miles of hills at the New River Half Marathon. I ran this race last year and it was my slowest half marathon of the year out of 13 that I ran. I remembered that there were hills but I don't think I appreciated the magnitude of the hills. There are a couple of 300-foot climbs as well as a couple of 100-foot climbs, and since I do very little hill training the results are just about what you would expect. I've always been a proponent of the run/walk method and used to incorporate regular walk breaks in every race. Over the past couple years I've mostly stopped doing that, instead trying to run the entire race without any walk breaks, at least most of the time. This race is an exception to the rule though. Last year I wal
Read more