Race #197 - Santa Scramble 5k - Concord, NC - 11/17/12

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 that time. Of course, I'm older now and that has a little bearing on my race times, but I believe my biggest problem is what it's always been: I like to eat too much.So after the race on the way home, we stopped at IHOP and ate with some of our running friends, and I decided that it would be my last meal of decadence for the foreseeable future and I will once again hop aboard the weight loss train and see how far it takes me. The week preceding Thanksgiving is possibly not the best time to start a diet but I've gone too far to wait until after the holidays, and besides, most of the extra 10 pounds that I've struggled with this year began over the holidays last year. My official weight today after my Sunday run was 148 pounds, which is 10 pounds more than when I ran my best races at 138 pounds last fall, so I'm at a good starting place.

But enough about me. If you're not familiar with the Santa Scramble, it's one of fastest and funnest 5k races around, being the first entry in the Concord Christmas parade so the course is lined with thousands of people who are there mostly for the parade and not the race, but it still provides some encouragement for you to run faster. There's also the fact that the first two miles of the race are mostly flat, followed by a huge downhill in the last mile that helps most runners come away with a personal best time.

Speaking of personal best times at the Santa Scramble yesterday, our friend Roberta (Bobbi) Villneff not only won the Masters award (40 years and older) but she is 60 years old and her 21:38 yesterday was only 16 seconds slower than the state record set in 1998! According to the age graded calculator her 21:38 was equivalent to a 30-year-old woman running a 5k in 16:34 and her age-graded score of 89.35% is absolutely amazing! (Age-graded percentage is the ratio of a world-class time for a runner’s age and gender divided by the runner’s actual time; 100% is approximately world-record level, 90% is world class, 80% is national class, and 70% is regional class.) She's also just been running for two years and is still getting faster!!

I was a little disappointed with the awards this year. Instead of the nice Santa trophies that we received in previous years, this year's age group awards were medals that were attached to a key chain. A key chain seems like a fairly cheap award, but after having thought about it, if the same medal had been attached to a ribbon like a normal medal they were actually pretty decent.

The T-shirts were fairly nice long-sleeved cotton shirts but you could save money by not getting one. With a lifetime supply of T-shirts already in my closet I was more than happy to take the discount.

We had quite a few participants (probably 15 or 20) from the GCR (Gaston County Runners) at the race this year. It's great to have a local group to run with and with the speed work sessions we've been doing every week with the Belmont Abbey track coach some of the runners are making serious progress (unfortunately I'm not one of the ones who's getting better). It's something I'm really thankful for on this Thanksgiving week. This morning (Sunday) at 7:00 about a dozen of us met in the cold for our weekly long run at the greenway and I thought about how great it is to have such a great group of running friends.


Click Here for Race Results

My Stats:

Time:  21:14
Pace:  6:51
Age Group:  1 of  13
Overall:  59 of  554 (10.6%)
Age Graded Equivalent Time:  17:05
Age Graded Equivalent Score:    75:54%

***************
* RACE RATING *
***************

Note: I made a few adjustments to the rating system as of 10/27/12 to give races a chance to score more rating points, so it can be futile to compare an older race with a newer one. Hopefully the different items on the checklist will inform you of what you need to know about a race. I'm still trying to keep it as objective as I can. The total points points possible are more than 100 but I'm trying to fine tune it so that good races end up in the 85-100 range. It's too much trouble to go back and make changes to the old race ratings, but one of these days after all of the fine tuning is done it may be much easier to compare races with each other.

RACE COURSE
0 - Chip Timing: (3 points if yes)
0 - Starting Mat: (2 points if yes)
2 - Water Stops: (0)none  (2)normal  (5)extras [Gu, sports drink, etc.]
1 - Course Marking:  (0)bad  (1)good
5 - Course Scenery:  (0)bad  (2)pleasant  (5)extraordinary
2 - Mile Markers: (0)poor or none  (1)normal  (2)with clocks or time called out
2 - Volunteers:  (0)too few  (2)good
5 - Finish line: (0)mediocre  (2)not bad  (5)very good  (7)spectacular!
2 - Certified Course: (0)no  (2) yes
2 - Correct Distance: (0)no  (2)yes (Starting line was moved back this year for correct distance)
1 - Partly or fully on unpaved roads:  (0)yes  (1)no

REGISTRATION
3 - Cost:  (0)expensive  (1)reasonable  (3)cheap!
3 - Race Day Registration:  (0)no  (3)yes

RESULTS
2 - Posted promptly online:  (0)no  (2)yes
1 - Clear link on website:  (0)no  (1)yes

AGE GROUPS
2 - 3 deep awards: (2)yes (0 for anything less) (Actually 4 deep this year!)
5 - 5-year age groups (5 points) (0 for anything less)
1 - 14 and under group (1)
1 - 65+ group (1)
1 - 70+ group (1)
1 - Top Overall M/F:  (0)none or first only  (2)top 3 or better
2 - Masters Category(40+): (0)no  (2)yes
3 - Grand Masters Category (50+):  (0)no  (3)yes
0 - Senior Grand Masters Category: (0)no  (5)yes

AWARDS
5 - Overall Winner Awards: (0)none  (2)yes  (5)excellent
2 - Age Group Awards: (0)none  (2)yes  (5)excellent
2 - Door Prizes or Drawing: (0)no  (2)yes   (3)fabulous door prizes!
0 - Finisher Medals for All Finishers: (0)no  (3)yes  (5)really cool medals

POST RACE
3 - Food for Race Participants: (0)none  (1)some  (3)adequate  (7)a feast!
0 - Entertainment:  (0)no  (1)yes
0 - Finisher times posted after race:  (0)no  (1)yes

REST ROOMS
0 - Porta Potties:  (0)no  (1)limited, long lines  (2)plentiful
2 - Indoor Restrooms: (0)no  (1)limited, long lines  (2)plentiful

T-SHIRTS
2 - T-Shirts: (0)no  (2)yes
2 - Design: (0)not good  (1)not bad  (2)nice  (5)beautiful!
0 - Material: (0)cotton  (2)technical fabric
2 - Discount for no-shirt option:  (0)no (2)yes

PHOTOGRAPHY
0 - Professional Photography: (0)no  (5)yes
x - Prices: (0)expensive  (2)reasonable  (5)cheap!
x - Free Photographs (newspaper, etc.):  (0)no  (2)yes  (5)lots of free pics!

PARKING
0 - Close to Start:  (2)yes  (0)no
2 - Close to Finish:  (2)yes  (0)no
2 - Plenty of spaces:  (2)yes  (0)no
2 - Free Parking:  (2)yes  (0)no

WEBSITE
2 - Dedicated race website (0)no  (2)yes
2 - Results or link to results posted on website:  (0)no  (2)yes

OTHER
2 - Shelter from Inclement Weather (needed or not): (0)no  (2)yes
0 - Swag (free socks, water bottles, etc.): (0)no  (2)yes, some  (5)excellent
0 - Part of race series or Grand Prix:  (0)no  (2)yes


TOTAL:  79

Comments

Post a Comment

Recent Popular Posts

Race #274 - Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon - Myrtle Beach, SC - 10/19/14

Image
For my running group, the Gaston County Runners (GCR), this has become our biggest event of the year. It was the fifth year of the Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon and I've run four of them. I'm not sure about the year I didn't run, but for all four years that I've been there the weather has been perfect. The last five miles or so is straight down Ocean Boulevard, with a turn onto the new boardwalk to the finish line at the site of the old Myrtle Beach Pavilion. It's one of the best finishes of any race I've been a part of and I look forward to it every year. This is a pretty big race with more than 3,000 finishers in the half marathon, and this year the GCR had seven runners who finished in the top 3 in their respective age groups. For the third straight year I managed to win the 60-64 age group, this year with a time of 1:35:44. I'm happy with that time although it was on a flat course and was about 30 seconds slower than last week's Hokie Half Marathon,
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

Race #206 - Kings Mountain Gateway 5k - Kings Mountain, NC - 03/02/13

Image
It's kind of gratifying that I finished this race as 2nd Overall Male (and 3rd Overall since the 1st place female beat me) and I won a big, beautiful trophy, but it's a little troubling that it was my slowest 5k since June 2009. There's no doubt it's a tough 5k -- maybe the most difficult 5k I've ever run, thanks to two long hills, including one that people refer to as "Cardio Hill." On the other hand, maybe it just seemed hard to me and the hills weren't as bad as I imagined. By the time I hit the first hill less than a mile into the race I was already huffing and puffing. I knew that I had started out a little faster than I wanted to because of the way the race goes down the street at the beginning and hangs a left and everybody falls into single file until we hit the greenway. Somebody warned me ahead of time that you could get into trouble if you ended up behind some slow people so I wanted to get a good spot. If you watch the video you'll
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 #574 - Rocktoberfest Half Marathon - Rock Hill, SC - 10/12/24

Image
Earlier this year, I decided it would be fun to run 26 half marathons for the year, one every two weeks. I had started the year off recovering from hernia surgery last November 30th, which was followed by six weeks with a Foley catheter. Two weeks after the catheter was removed I ran my first half marathon and felt great just to be somewhat back to normal. At 72, I'm slower than ever, so I felt the need to challenge myself to stay motivated, and I thought it would be fun to at least try to run more half marathons than I've ever run previously in a year. In 2015, I ran 16 half marathons, the most I'd run in any year. This was my 16th for 2024, and I'm registered for two more, so I should surpass my previous record, but the goal of 26 has recently hit a snag. Hurricane Helene devastated the North Carolina mountains, where my next two half-marathons were scheduled. We're not in the mountains but are close enough that the hurricane affected us, and on the morning my Dav
Read more