Race #43 – Firecracker 5k – Huntersville NC – 07/04/09


Finishing at a time of 21:39, I set a new personal record for the 5k. Celebrations ensued all around the country with fireworks displays, parties, and God knows what else. I was a little embarrassed by the outpouring of support since it was only 2 seconds off my old PR, but hey. When I mentioned it to Linda, she shot down the notion that any of the hoopla was over my new PR. Instead she said it had something to do with somebody named Joey Chestnut eating 68 hot dogs at Coney Island. Yeah right.
Either way, it was a fun race. It was the second race we’ve run at the Huntersville Family Fitness and Aquatic Center (the first one was the Fall Harvest Run back on 11/08/08), and on the way home Linda mentioned that both of those races have been two of her favorites. It’s really a nice facility and they do a great job with the races out there. Once again the T-shirts were high quality technical material shirts just like in the Fall Harvest Run and are among the best you’ll get at any race.
The race course is a good one: quite a bit of downhill over the first mile, and a gentle upward slope over the next mile and a half or so, finishing on a gentle slope downward. I took off pretty fast at the outset and passed several people that I knew would be nipping at my heels, so for the remainder of the race I was too scared to walk (probably a good thing) because I could just imagine them thinking, “I’ll catch that guy as soon as he runs out of gas and starts walking.” So I managed to keep going and didn’t get passed by too many people (or maybe I’ve blocked it out of my memory). One of my heel-nippers, Brenneman Thompson, did catch me about 200 yards from the finish and left me in the dust. Lucky for me he’s in the 50-54 age group.
Post-race food was good — sub sandwiches, bagels, and coffee — no fruit but I’m tired of bananas and oranges anyway. The awards ceremony was great and in addition to nice medals the age group winners also received gift certificates to Dick’s Sporting Goods. I came in 2nd and got a $10 certificate, I saw a 1st place winner had a $20 certificate, and I’m not sure about 3rd place. There was a really entertaining DJ on hand who did a nice job of encouraging the runners during the race, then getting some dancing going while we were waiting for the race results, and then did a good job with the awards as well.
I took a lot of photos after the race and have included 266 of them in the slideshow including some of the dancing, the kids race, and runners as they were finishing. The original size large photos (3000 x 4000 pixels) can be downloaded for free by clicking on the slideshow then downloading whatever you want from Picasa.
7 – 1-10 Website (Informaton, results, registration, photo links, etc.)
8 – 1-10 Awards (Quality of medals, trophies, etc.) (1 to 10)
9 – 1-10 Awards Presentation (PA system, winning times, etc.) (1 to 10)
6 – 1-10 Food for Race Participants (1 to 10)
9 – 1-10 T-Shirts (1 to 10 with 5 being average)
4 – 4/6 Part of Race Series (Grand Prix, etc.) (6=Yes and 4=No)
0 – 0/5 Professional Photography (5=Yes and 0=No)
6 – 4/6 Chip Timing (6=Yes and 4=No)
7 – 3/7 Certified Course (by USA Track & Field) (7=Yes and 3=No)
8 – 1-10 Course (1 to 10 with 5 being average)
8 – 1-10 Parking (1 to 10 with 5 being average)
8 – 1-10 Entertainment (1 to 10 with 5 being average)
7 – 3/7 Age Groups (7 if 5-year groups; 3 if 10-year groups)
5 – 0/5 Indoor Shelter from Elements (0 if none; 5 if provided)
4 – 1-10 Bathroom Facilities
0-10 Other
TOTAL – 96

Comments

Post a Comment

Recent Popular Posts

Race #158 - Mount Mourne Christmas Elf 5k - Mooresville, NC - 12/24/11

Image
I had heard a lot about this race from others who have run it in the past and the reviews were always good, so we headed over to the Mooresville area to experience it for ourselves. It actually exceeded our expectations, being just about a perfect race except for a glitch in putting down the cones or marking the course or something (I never figured out what exactly). The result was that the race was quite a bit longer than a 5k. According to several other people I talked to, they all had Garmin measurements of between 3.38 and 3.40 miles although personally my Garmin measured only 3.25. I don't check distances as I'm running, but I usually have a pretty good feel for how fast I'm running and I felt like I might have been somewhere between about 20:45 and 21:00, so as I approached the finish line and saw the clock at 22 minutes I was surprised. My final time of 22:39 still won my age group (55-59) and everybody else seemed to think they would have been about 2 minutes fast...
Read more

Race #232 - Grover Pumpkin Run 5k - Grover, NC - 10/26/13

Image
This was possibly the least organized race I've ever run. If all races were like this I'd probably revert back to being a mall walker. I arrived in Grover having read in the directions that the race was on "Main Street." Okay, that sounds simple enough since Grover is just a small town. Since the race was being held in conjunction with the Grover Pumpkin Festival I thought it would be easy to spot, and sure enough, there were hundreds of people gathered for the Pumpkin Festival, and it was nice. Lots of good-smelling food (although I was trying to watch my diet), great entertainment with a band on stage that sounded surprisingly good I thought, and lots of people, many dressed in Halloween costumes. I found the nearest parking space I could find, which was probably at least a quarter mile from the action, and walked up to find the race registration area. I walked completely to the other side of the festival without seeing anything, so I asked three guys who were...
Read more

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 #254 - Brooklyn Half Marathon - Brooklyn, NY - 05/17/14

Image
Wow... Just when I thought my best running days were over, this one has me thinking that maybe there are still a few all-time Personal Records waiting to be set with these old legs. Over the past month I've added about 10 extra miles per week to my training regimen and I think that made the difference. I had been running 10-12 miles for a long run each week, but I've bumped it up to 15, 16, and 17 miles over the past three weeks as I begin training for my first full marathon in four years, which will be coming up in September. I'm feeling great right now so I thought I'd do okay, but I was shocked when I found out my chip time was 1:32:13, only 16 seconds slower than my all-time PR that I ran three years ago, the fall of 2011, when I ran all of my all-time PR's. I didn't win my age group but I didn't expect to since New York City is one of the most competitive racing communities in the world. My goal was to finish in the top 10 in my age group and I fini...
Read more

Race #198 - Turkey Trot 8k at Southpark - Charlotte, NC - 11/22/12

Image
Oops... It's been five days since the Turkey Trot and it keeps slipping my mind that I'm supposed to write a blog entry about it. I'm preoccupied with other things and I'm not really in blog mode but, as usual, I figure I can write a little something for at least as long as I can keep running. There's no big news and I'm slower than I was last year, finishing this year's Turkey Trot about a minute and a half slower than last year (35:02 this year as opposed to 33:13 last year, which is my 8k PR). I knew going in that I'd be slower. I guess I shouldn't be terribly disappointed since I finished 2nd out of 50 runners in the 60-64 age group and 232nd overall out of 4,233 runners, which is in the top 6% overall. For some reason over the past month I seem to have one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel and things haven't gotten any better. Since I've run 198 races now I'd really like to finish out 2012 with exactly two mo...
Read more