The Old Runner

After 96 pain-free races and over 3,000 miles of no injuries in a little less than two years of running, this old man finally had a reality check this week. Race #97 was supposed to have been the Bele Chere 5k in Asheville. Instead, I hobbled around Martha Rivers Park Saturday morning as I’ve been doing all week. This time I managed to do the Grandpappy Amos for 2.3 miles before giving up. There is a rule of thumb that almost every runner knows and most runners adhere to: Never increase your mileage by more than 10% in a week. It’s one of the first rules of running most of us learn, and until recently I followed it religiously. For some reason though, about three weeks ago I decided that maybe it didn’t apply to me. Uh… probably not a great idea. I had been running 40 miles a week for a while and decided that adding another 10 miles wouldn’t be any big deal.  It worked fine for the first two weeks, but by the third week things started to unravel on me. I had to cut the 18-mile run...

As we all know, there are NO TIME OUTS in running, so before I lose track of where I’ve been and where I’m going, I’ll continue on my merry way, so please forgive my indiscretion if I seemed to lose my train of thought for a day or two. Actually, things are starting to get interesting for the first time in a while. After almost two years of pain-free running over which time I’ve never missed a race because of injury, it’s looking like Race #97 won’t happen as scheduled, but I’ll talk about that in a later post. Morganton’s Athletic Quilt Street Light 5k is a race I had heard quite a few people talk about as one of their favorites. I’m not a huge fan of the nighttime races since I don’t like running in the dark and it seems to mess up my running schedule, but this looked like our best option for the week and except for it being a rainy night in Morganton it turned out to be an enjoyable experience. Linda and I both finished in 1st place in our age groups and I won $50 in cash in a draw...

I could tell you about our 11th President, James K. Polk (although you’d learn more by looking him up on  Wikipedia ), or I can tell you about how I ran yet another 5k race somewhere between 20:30 and 22:30 (exactly 21:30 today). Either way, if you’re like me, in about 15 seconds both subjects will make you feel like you’ve been attacked by a swarm of  tsetse flies . The good news is that I ran this race 39 seconds faster this year than last year (22:09 last year and 21:30 this year). Oddly though, I was 38 seconds slower in this week’s 5k compared to last week’s 20:52 up in the mountains in Weaverville. I guess it’s just a combination of factors, and if I’m going to be stuck somewhere this is probably a pretty good spot for me at the moment. I hate to talk bad about a race, but the James K. Polk 5k is kind of a yawner. The only redeeming feature of the race is that it’s pretty close to home and we get to see our running friends from the Charlotte area. I’ve heard that the ra...

In my quest to run eight races in the current season of the Asheville Track Club Grand Prix series, I pried Granny out of the bed at 4 o’clock this morning and off we headed for Weaverville, just North of Asheville. I told her the race began at 8:30. It actually began at 8:00 but I wanted to add a little emergency padding just in case. We made it with an hour to spare and she got all righteously indignant and promised to start checking the starting times, but she never does, and lucky for me she also doesn’t read my blog. The natives assured us that there weren’t many hills to contend with, but as we approached the vicinity of North Buncombe High School, where the race would start and finish, we were reminded not to trust the judgment of those who travel day in and day out in an area where every paved surface reminds those of us from the Piedmont of the Thunder Road roller coaster. It really wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be though. Every uphill had a corresponding downhill (fun...