The Old Runner

Arrive early and expect delays. It’s the airport after all, and sure enough, if you didn’t arrive early for the Runway 5k this year you very well may have missed the delays, and possibly even the entire race. The official starting time was supposed to be 8:00 a.m., but as 2,000+ runners crowded near the starting line at about 8:02 an announcement was made that the race would be delayed by 15 minutes. A little after 8:15 another announcement was made that there would be another 10-minute delay. Finally, at 8:28 a.m. the race began. It wasn’t a huge problem for us. As we arrived at the race site at 6:45 there was already a long line of cars ahead of us. It was slow going, but we managed to make it to a parking space in only about 15 minutes. Apparently though, with each minute the traffic backup grew longer and longer, and I read one comment on Facebook saying that they arrived at the turn-off from Billy Graham Parkway at 7:15 and weren’t able to get parked until 8:45, and by then of co...

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the inaugural running of the Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon. If the website and all of the promotion were any indication of this half marathon event, it would be great for sure, but you really can’t tell from just a website what you’re getting yourself into. Since the New York City Marathon is just two weeks away for me, this was a taper week that called for a long run of 12 miles, so it fit nicely into my plans. Linda was interested in it as well, and trained to run this as her second half marathon. We decided to wait and see how the weather forecast was shaping up before we committed ourselves, and by about Tuesday it was looking like it might be a beautiful beach weekend, so we went ahead and registered a couple of days before the pre-registration cutoff in order to save $20 each on the registration fee. There was no race-day registration and the last day you could register for this Sunday half was Saturday at the expo. The full registration fee of...

This was our second trip to the Komen Foothills Race for the Cure in Hickory. It was Race #6 for me two years ago and a hundred races later it was nice to revisit, but especially nice to reflect on the fact that I’ve been able to keep running over that two-year period of time with no major setbacks. Linda and I both feel better than we’ve ever felt and both of us ran considerably faster in this race than we did when we were two years younger. My time today was 21:29, which was almost 5 minutes faster than my 26:24 time two years ago. One of the nice things about this race is that it begins and ends in the street right in front of the Lutherhaus Apartments, where my 84-year-old stepmother lives, so we were able to walk over and visit after the race. We also spent some time at the race with some of my very best friends from the hippie era, Ken and Lila, whose 35-year-old daughter was running her third 5k. Oddly enough, Ken and Lila are no longer hippies, and stranger still, I had to loo...

The Bethel community just outside Waynesville provided the setting for the popular 2003 movie, “Cold Mountain,” and it’s hard to imagine a more beautiful area for a race in the autumn. This was the 17th year that the Bethel Half Marathon was held on the second Saturday in October. Unlike road races that are held in larger cities such as Asheville or Charlotte, this race depends on the support of the local non-running community to serve as volunteers, and they do an amazing job. As soon as we arrived at around 7:30, about an hour before the start of the race, just outside the door to the middle school gym there was already a table set up with a variety of homemade sweets such as brownies, hot coffee, and more. The race route was manned by not only the local residents but also by several different volunteer fire departments and EMT services as well as six motorcyclists who traveled back and forth along the course looking for anybody who needed assistance. At the end of the race there wa...

This was my first 5k race since August 28th, a little over a month ago. In the interval since then I’ve run a couple of 10k races and the agonizing Asheville Citizen-Times Half Marathon, so running a shorter distance today was kind of a relief.  I had actually planned to run the 10k, but I’ve got a 20-mile training run scheduled for tomorrow and thought it might be wise not to overdo it on the race mileage. Both the 5k and 10k start at the same time and are mostly downhill for the first mile, which is great, but it’s an out and back course so what the first mile giveth, the last mile taketh away. After that first mile it’s pretty flat on the beautiful Morganton greenway, which we ran recently in the Sunrise on the Greenway race. It was fun to go back and run the HOP Race (I think it stands for “Help Our Project”… or maybe it’s “Help Our Park”). Two years ago it was Race #4 for me, so it was nice to come back for Race #104 and reflect a little on how much has happened in the hundre...