The Old Runner

The Frostbite 5k in Kannapolis, North Carolina, provided a nice change of pace from last week’s massive Thunder Road, and instead of 7,000 runners there were maybe 150. Thunder Road was by far the biggest race I’ve been in over the four months I’ve been running, and now that I’ve done the large and the small I definitely favor the smaller ones — issues such as not having nearly as many people to trip over and the convenient parking and small-town charm are appealing, at least to me. As you may be able to tell from the photo, the weather was beautiful, unseasonably mild with temperatures in the low 60s, so “Frostbite 5k” ended up being a bit of a misnomer, but that’s fine by me. As far as the course goes, what Concord giveth, Kannapolis taketh away (they’re neighboring communities). The Santa Scramble in Concord a few weeks ago featured more downhill running than any other race. The Frostbite 5k today had more hills than I’ve seen in any of the previous races. I had to rely on the Jeff...

It’s the biggest race in the Charlotte area, this year with about 7,000 participants in the marathon, half marathon, and 5k combined. I just started running about four months ago (Labor Day Weekend) and have run in a 5k race each week since then, so I was a little nervous about this race since I was running in a half marathon for the first time. I was kind of secretly hoping to finish in under 2 hours but I knew that would be a best case scenario since I had never even run 13.1 miles, even in training (my longest long run has been 12 miles about 3 weeks ago). Anyhoo, I finished in 2:01:05 (chip time), and that includes about a 2-minute bathroom stop at mile 8, so I’m pretty happy about that. Maybe next time I can drink less before the race or run a little faster; either way it gives me a number to shoot for. It’s kind of like apples and oranges trying to compare a race with 7,000 runners with a race of maybe a couple hundred (and sometimes less than 100). It’s easy to get lost in the ...

I intended to take some photos to post here but never got the camera out of the car. It was freezing outside and didn’t seem to warm up any at all. I think it might have been about 35 degrees when the awards were handed out about 10:30 a.m. >>Click Here for the Race Results<< The course was up and down (lots of hills) through a maze of local nondescript neighborhoods and was centered around a gazebo at Patriot’s Park near the middle of town. Luckily Kings Mountain is a small town and it was easy to find the park at the edge of downtown KM because no actual address was given for the race other than “Patriot’s Park at the gazebo.” The race was sponsored by the YMCA, which would have been a better place to have the race and would have provided some shelter from the freezing cold. There were also no porta-potties and the only nearby restrooms were in the theatre up the street (which I think might have been providing care for small children during the race). On the bright side,...