The Old Runner

When I ran that first 5k a little over four years ago back in September 2008, I really didn't have any aspirations other than just being able to finish that particular race, but by the time I reached the finish line I was hooked. I didn't have any idea what the future held but I wanted to see if I could keep it up for a while and see how things worked out. Things have worked out better than I could have imagined at that time. I still don't know what the future holds. All I can do is run one race at a time and hope that there's at least one more race left to run. I've got a quote posted in my office that I read often that says, "You're never too old to start, and it's always too soon to stop." The Mount Mourne Volunteer Fire Department Elf 5k is a race that I avoided for a couple years. It just didn't sound like it would be that great although some of my friends touted it as a favorite. I finally gave it a try last year and it was great, and...

We couldn't have asked for better weather for a December half marathon. This was the second year it was held and I missed it last year because it was held on the same week we were in Hawaii. I signed up a couple months in advance at a bargain price, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well the race seemed to be organized. The only real issue I heard from runners is that there are a few places in the race where we're running on some narrow roads where the traffic was fairly heavy. I noticed those areas myself but didn't have any problems with it, although it did cross my mind that it wouldn't take much for a disaster to occur. One runner told me that a driver came up in back of him and started blowing his horn. Other than that, everything was great and it's a race I'll look forward to running again in the future. I thought the course was great except for those high traffic areas, with most of it being through up-scale quiet neighborhoods with wide streets. T...

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...

This is the only race I've never missed -- five straight years now beginning in 2008 just a couple months after I began running. For every one of the first four years it was my fastest 5k race of the year. Although I haven't been in exactly miserable shape, I knew I wasn't in great shape and there was little chance that I could beat the 20:31 time I ran early in 2012 at the Cupid's Cup 5k in Charlotte, and even less chance of being in the neighborhood of last year's Santa Scramble time of 19:42. I actually thought about just skipping the Santa Scramble this year since I'm planning on running the Turkey Trot this coming Thursday, but I figured I might as well see how far I've fallen in the past year. Turns out I've fallen quite a bit, with this year's time of 21:14 being 1:32 slower than just a year ago and my second slowest Santa Scramble time ever, with the 2008 race being the only one slower, and I had only been running for a couple months at t...

Even though this race is only a couple miles from where I live, this was only the second time I have run it. Honestly, I had kind of avoided it over the last couple years since they had 10-year age groups and as I was approaching 60 I didn't like being stuck competing in an age group with people who were as much as nine years younger than me. There's a huge difference in being 50 years old and being 59 years old, whether you're a runner or not, but especially in age group competition. This year the race organizers changed it to 5-year age groups, which to me is a great improvement. I'm 60 now so I would have been at the bottom of the 60-69 age group, but I don't really take any pleasure in beating up on a 69-year-old either, and if you're 69 you most likely don't want to have to worry about the 60-year-olds, so it should be a welcome improvement for anybody who cares about age-group competition. I don't know the history of every race in Gaston County...

This week I decided to stay close to home and run the hometown Pumpkin Pi 5k. This race is sponsored by the Cancer Services of Gaston County and it replaced the popular Labor Day 5k that's been held for several years in the same location. The course is still the same but I'm sorry to say the race fell flat in most other ways. In the two previous years that I ran the Labor Day 5k there were more than 300 runners who participated. As near as I could tell there were 58 in this one [there were actually 84 finishers] , assuming the printout I saw after the race was correct. I also have a feeling that was the last time I'll see the results, although I did hear someone say they'd try to get them on the website. [Note: The race results actually showed up within a week on Athlinks, so they actually did a good job getting the results up!] The awards were nice, especially the overall and Masters awards. The age group awards were clear plastic medals (Plexiglass maybe?) and the...

After spending a good portion of last week's half marathon run in Myrtle Beach sounding like I was coughing up a lung, I decided to maybe take a couple weeks off from racing and give my body some time to recover. I had already registered for the Spinx Half Marathon but was about 95% sure I wouldn't feel good enough to run it. I woke up Monday morning with the intention of taking Linda to the doctor to get checked out. After running the Myrtle Beach half she had taken a tumble after tripping over something while exiting the finishers corral and from her symptoms it seemed like she might have a rib fracture. The doctor agreed and for the next six to eight weeks she'll be out of commission as far as running is concerned. While we were at the doctor's office I decided to see if they could fit me in he could shed some light on why I've been coughing so much over the past month. The doc decided to do a spirometry (lung function test) and I wasn't able to complet...

What a beautiful weekend for a race at the beach! With high temperatures in the mid-70s and zero percent chance of rain it was about as perfect as it could could be for the Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon (13.1 miles). Linda and I had planned on skipping this race and instead run next week's Spinx Half Marathon in Greenville, but a lot of our friends from the Gaston County Runners were going to the beach so we decided to head that way too. We all had a great time. The GCR is a fantastic group of supportive runners. It's not an organized running club and nobody's really in charge, but nobody has to be. We have several runs each week that are organized through Facebook and it's not unusual to have 20 or more runners come out. The race course for the Mini Marathon was a nice improvement over the course we ran two years ago. Instead of starting at the mostly abandoned original outlet mall in Myrtle Beach with a route that included a large bridge over the Intracoastal Wat...

After a month of wandering around aimlessly from week to week and sleeping in on Saturday mornings (that part was actually kinda nice), today I ran my first race in a month and, surprisingly, I seem to still be intact. I had initially planned to also take this week off, then run a 5k next week and see how it went, but all week I felt pretty good and was able to step up my speed some so I decided to try out my hammy a week earlier. I don't know much about hamstring injuries other than people say they seem to hang on forever. I'm starting to get the idea about that. It first began with a kind of audible "pop" in my leg as I was doing speed work about three months ago, and since then it has flared up two more times -- once in a race and again at a speed work session. During all three of those flare-ups it's been hard to run afterwards for a few days but then I seem to be okay other than just enough dull pain to know it's still there. I've managed to keep ...

Just on the edge of the Uwharrie National Forest is the beautiful little town of Badin, population 1,154, just a few miles past Albemarle. As you may know, Albemarle is the home of Peter Asciutto's Vac & Dash, and Peter has helped turn Albemarle and Stanly County into one of North Carolina's hottest running communities. Run the Valley is one of the premier Vac & Dash racing events of the year and the three races this year (5k, 10k, and half marathon) had a combined total of 466 registered runners. It's also on the same day as the Run for the Green Half Marathon in Davidson and the Asheville Citizen-Times Half Marathon in Asheville, which are both great races and I have run each of those twice before. I decided I'd do Run the Valley this year since I hadn't run it before, it's a Vac & Dash race (which is always good), and registration was cheaper. I met 23-year-old Jarrett Culbreth as we ran down Morrow Mountain. together. I was struggling by th...

It's the 4th anniversary of my first race! This is me crossing the finish line on September 13, 2008. My intention was just to run a 5k race and nothing more than that but I was an addict by the time I hit the finish line. I weighed about 30 pounds more than I do now and my pace was about 2 minutes per mile slower than now, but I still won my age group. Of course, in this tiny race I was the only runner over 50 years old. Since then I decided to keep running, and in those four years I've run a total of 190 races (including 41 half marathons and a couple of full marathons). If everything holds up my goal for the next year is to run 60 races (kind of like "60 at 60" since I'm 60 years old) and reach my 5th anniversary having run 250 races for an average of 50 per year. I'm not sure if I can do that but I'll give it a shot and see.

Weekends like this are the reason that I don't like to pre-register for races. The fall race season has begun and there were races in every direction. I whittled my choices down to this one and the Morganton Greenway race, and decided on this one at the last minute partly because it's a little closer and allowed us to sleep an extra 30 minutes and partly because we hadn't seen our good friend and running phenom Roberta "Bobbi" Villneff in a while. Bobbi just started running a couple years ago and is now easily one of the fastest women over 60 in the state. In the race today she finished as 1st female in the Masters Division (ages 40 and over) for the second year in a row. I managed to get 3rd place in the male Masters Division, which is a rare feat for me so that was nice... gotta cool trophy too! Mooresville is about 40 miles from Gastonia and we don't really know a lot of people there, so we were pleasantly surprised to run into quite a few of our runn...