The Old Runner

This weekend we had the pleasure of keeping our 2-year-old grandson Jonas for two days. Linda and I were both excited to take him to his very first race. We had originally planned on running a 5k at McAlpine Park in Charlotte on Saturday morning but decided instead on the Friday night 5k in Waxhaw so we could sleep later on Saturday morning. We left Gastonia just in time to hit the Friday afternoon rush hour traffic on I-485 heading towards Pineville, which is always a lovely experience. After an hour or so of stop-and-go driving we finally escaped the logjam on 485 and were headed down US 521 towards Waxhaw. We had brought Jonas some snacks but Linda and I were getting hungry. We thought we were leaving home in time to stop and eat but the slow traffic changed those plans. Race time was fast approaching so using my grandfatherly wisdom I decided our best move would be to find the race site and register to run, then find some food. Surely there’s somewhere to grab a quick bite to eat ...

As the 2nd race in the 10-race Run For Your Life Grand Prix series, the Skyline 5k attracts some of the most competitive runners in the area. Because of some conflicts in timing on my race schedule I won’t be competing in the RFYL Grand Prix this year, which is kind of sucky but that’s life I guess. I’ll hope to get in on the fun next year. Nevertheless, I’m still planning on running about half of this year’s Charlotte GP races and try to at least make a little bit of noise in my age group when I’m there. As always, it was good to see the Charlotte runners we know both before and after the race. There was a light rain falling as we drove over the Charlotte but by the time the race started it had stopped raining and the rain held off until well after the race was over. After Linda and I picked up our numbers and T-shirts we took our stuff back to the car then went back to join the race crowd. I told Linda I was heading up to the start (I like to nudge my way up close to the front) and ...

Gone fishing? To be honest, I’ve never been much of a fisherman. To be a little more precise, I’ve never owned a fishing pole and I’ve never caught a fish, so when I announced after this past Saturday’s race that I’ve “Gone Fishing” and wouldn’t be doing any more commentaries on the races I’ve run, I should have known it wouldn’t last. I’m sure most of the readers of this blog would rise up with a resounding “Who cares?”, and rightly so. One less blog to keep up with would simplify life for most people, including me. But it’s my blog, and the compulsive side of me just won’t let well enough alone, so when I looked at that big empty spot where I should have been running my mouth, I knew the only proper thing would be to cut the fishing trip short and fill in the blanks, lest I actually caught a fish and wouldn’t know what to do with it. I mentioned in my swan song that I had already covered just about everything imaginable in the first twenty races I ran. Here I am at race #82 and, no ...

The week got off to a little bit of a rocky start. My left little piggy that had roast beef (in layman’s terms, that’s the middle toe on my left foot) was giving me fits every time I ran. On Wednesday I limped into the house after my run and told Linda I’d probably just skip running on Thursday and Friday so my foot would have time to recover enough to run a half marathon on Saturday. Then I thought of something my running guru Jerry Sofley told me while I was limping around after the recent Little Rock Half Marathon. He said that before he ran he always put petroleum jelly on his toes. That seemed a little odd and he didn’t really even explain why a person would grease their piggies before running, but with a couple of shoes full of aching toes I remembered his sage advice and decided to give it a try. After I got out of the shower and dried off on Wednesday night I applied a thin layer of Vaseline to all of my toes, and as soon as I did they felt better! Since then I’ve been a-slipp...

Wow… Race #80… a milestone of sorts, or at least a number divisible by 10. This was my second time around the hills and valleys of the Black Mountain Greenway Challenge 10k. The hills are brutal pretty much anywhere in the Asheville area, but it kind of makes the hills down in the Piedmont a lot easier to run when we get back home.  In last year’s race ( Race #26 ) my time was 49:47 and I walked a total of 10 times using the Galloway method. I’ve learned a little since then and am in better shape than I was a year ago so I expected to run a little faster this year. The Galloway method has been replaced by heart rate monitoring, so now instead of checking my pace throughout the race I try to run at about 92% of my Maximum Heart Rate. Nothing terribly scientific about the 92%, but after experimenting for a few months that just seems to be where my body feels most comfortable.  Something I’ve noticed in my last couple of races is that I’m gravitating towards a little higher hear...

Are you kiddin’ me? I scoffed when Linda said I resembled a plucked chicken in my new racing singlet. There’s nothing quite like being really old and feeling really young (which I am and I do), but when I found out that April 1st was Susan Boyle’s birthday and I’m nine years older than her, for a few minutes at least, reality set in and spring chicken took on a whole new meaning. As I dreamed a dream of days gone by, with shoelaces untied we headed up to “The 1st Ever Vac & Dash April Fools Day 5k Classic” in Albemarle. Although it’s only about 60 miles from Gastonia, we were probably halfway there before we realized that neither of us had actually ever been to Albemarle. In a mixture of geodyslexia and shriveled brain cells that were partly due to age and partly to being a survivor of the sixties (the resulting concoction smelled a little like mothballs), I had confused Albemarle with Asheboro, and only by the grace of GPS did we end up at the race instead of the zoo. It was our ...