The Old Runner

After two straight weeks of no races, it was a pleasure to wake up early on this Saturday morning and head to a race. January is probably the month with the fewest races so there aren't a lot to choose from but this is a good small-town race close to home. The Alyce T. Guettler Hunger Run has been held now for 32 consecutive years, which I'm guessing would make it one of the oldest races in the state of South Carolina. It's well organized and things seem to run smoothly, but it's a little old-school, and to me one of the drawbacks is that there is very little online information about the race. There's no website but if you look hard enough you get enough information to find your way there. As I write this at 9 p.m. the night of the race I still can't find the official results, but I've got a busy day scheduled tomorrow so I'll add results later on when they show up. [Note: After I posted this Stan Austin sent me a link to the results, which were up on ...

I feel like a complete underachiever since almost every other runner I know ran either an ultramarathon or a full marathon this morning, but I did manage to finish 1st of 17 in the 50-59 age group (less than two months from my 60th birthday) and 17th of 196 overall at the 9th Annual Resolution Half Marathon in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. This is a particularly hilly area near Paris Mountain and last year it was my second slowest half marathon out of the thirteen half marathons I ran, so my goal going in was to at least run better than I did last year. It ended up well, with this year's time being over 7 minutes faster than last year. The weather was spectacular for January 7th with the temperature in the mid 40s at the beginning of the race to around 60 degrees at the finish -- much better than last year's bone-chilling 22 degrees at the start of the race that was cold and windy throughout. This is a fun race that's organized well by the local YMCA. They announced a...

I didn't really have any big plans for a race on New Year's weekend, but on Thursday night when Stan Austin mentioned on Facebook that the ultra run in Morganton was adding a marathon and half marathon option at the last minute, I jumped at the chance to get one final half marathon in for the year. If you're scoring at home, you may remember that I had intended to run a half marathon every month in 2011. It didn't quite work out because I got sidetracked in November, but I managed to run a couple during two months and with this one on the last day of the year I ended up with 13 for 2011. I'll keep trying to run 10 or 12 half marathons a year as long as I can. Right now it's my favorite distance since it provides plenty of challenge while not requiring any extra training. Since the marathon and half marathon were just added in the final week with no advertising at all, they were both tiny races, with only 6 runners in the marathon and 12 in the half marathon...