The Old Runner

It's nice to finally be settling in for some local races after all the traveling we've been doing for the past few months. This week's race was in our hometown of Gastonia, and it's the biggest local race of the year. This time around there were 1,235 finishers in the competitive 5k race and hundreds more in the 2k walk. The unique thing about this race is that in each 10-year age group the 1st place finisher gets to direct a $500 donation towards any local participating nonprofit group of their choice, and 2nd place directs $250 towards their choice. For the second year in a row I ran for Career Management Group (CMG), one of the lesser known nonprofit groups. They run Gaston Residential Services (GRS), which provides housing for handicapped adults. Linda's twin sister has been one of their clients for many years and they've done a beautiful job over the years in helping her to be as independent as possible despite being debilitated with cerebral palsy. She...

It's Tuesday morning as I write this, three days after the RaceFest Half Marathon and a day after the finish line bombing of the Boston Marathon. As it is with most other people, my thoughts and prayers are with the people who were there, which included quite a few of my running friends. It's early still so not a lot is known but I'm sure much more will be uncovered soon about the motivation behind it, so I won't say a lot, but what a screwy world we live in today. Crossing the finish line might never be quite the same again. The RaceFest Half Marathon and 10k is one of Charlotte's big running events of the spring season and I always look forward to it. I opted for the half marathon, my third in the past four weeks, and it looked like it might be a reunion of sorts for the age group rivalry among me and Butch Holt and Bob Nelson. It turned out that Butch is just getting back into shape after a heart procedure and is running great but chose to run the shorter 10...

It was the third annual Grandfather-Grandson Half Marathon for Ryan and me this past weekend at the Knoxville Half Marathon. It's amazing how fast three years go by, especially compared to how long three years seemed when I was young. It was a lot of fun as always, and I'm hoping we can continue this for many more years and possibly even be joined by some of the rest of the family over time. Ryan is a great athlete -- football and baseball in school, but mainly power lifting now. The power lifting doesn't exactly complement long distance running, so it's a bit of a stretch for him to go out and run a half marathon, but he says he feels like it's a good challenge for him each year, and I suspect he knows that I really appreciate that we're able to share this event. I'd love to be able to do it for the next ten years, and twenty would be even better! If you've been keeping up with my blog, you know that I've been recording my races recently with ...