The Old Runner

I've had better weeks. On Sunday night I started having cold symptoms and I was unsure if I had a cold or possibly COVID. I contacted my doctor's office and they told me to wait at least 24 hours then get a COVID test if I still felt sick, so on Tuesday I was tested and thankfully it was negative. Having the Coronovirus would have kept me from going to next week's Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon, which has been the main race I'm planning for the fall, so I should still make it to the race albeit with a cough and runny nose. I thought about skipping this race altogether since I'm still not feeling great and only ran about half of my usual training miles for the week, but decided it would probably be better to see if I could get in a fairly decent run before Myrtle Beach. The Kings Mountain Running Festival consists of four races (5k, 10k, half marathon, and full marathon). I considered the 10k but decided it would be best to go for the shortest distance instead.  The firs...

This was the inaugural running of the "Gaston College Foundation Stampede for Student Success 5k," which almost takes longer to say than it does to run the race. The TV show The Office outdid it a little bit with "Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race for the Cure 5k," but not by much.  The race was organized well and run entirely on the 150-acre campus of Gaston College. One nice perk was that they had a table set up with a big variety of items and all of the runners were invited to take whatever item they wanted. There was still quite a bit left over after the awards and people were invited to clean it out and take everything. Beats having to organize a yard sale I guess.  There was a bit of an issue with the awards. Because of the epidemic apparently, they were unable to get the medals that were ordered for age groups, but they said they'd mail them out once they arrived, and after ...

Back in 2009 when I first ran this race it was called the Lungstrong 15k/5k and it was one of the Charlotte area's major racing events. That year there were 929 finishers in the two races combined. Last year (2020) the race was canceled because of Covid and there seems to be a hesitancy for people to come back to the races. In the fall of 2019, just before the pandemic, the race size had fallen off some but there were still about 700 in the two races. Anticipating a packed parking lot, I headed out early to get a good parking spot but I arrived to find an empty parking lot so I had plenty of choices. The parking lot never did fill up, and as we lined up to start the 15k a few minutes before the 5k began, there wasn't a lot of need to jockey for position to get near the starting line. It turns out there were fewer than 200 runners in the two races combined this year (130 in the 15k and 66 in the 5k). That's disappointing, and it leaves me wondering if there will be a next ye...