The Old Runner

This was my 14th half marathon this year, in a year that I'm hoping to run 20+. Unfortunately, as I write this a week after the race, I'm not feeling as gung-ho as I did when the year began. I'm already thinking of how miserable the cold weather races will feel, thus making it easy for me to back out in less-than-ideal weather conditions.  This was the first half marathon I ran on the comeback trail a year ago, but it was before I restarted the blog, so I only have my Garmin Connect and Strava data to help me remember it. I finished last year's race in 2:06:49, and this year, I was a little slower at 2:09:29, but I did finish 1st in the 70-74 age group this year as opposed to 2nd last year. The stat that stood out most to me is that this race had 913 finishers last year and only 503 this year! It's one of three half marathons that begin at Pack Square, and it's the only one of the three that also ends there. The other two end down along the river, so you don'

I'm in a half-marathon mindset, so I only run a handful of 5k races this year. This series of four races is one of those because it's not only nearby, but many friends are also running the series, and the race director and his wife are also long-time running friends. All of the races are also held on Friday night so that still gives me a chance to run another race over the weekend if there's one available. This was the fourth and final race of the series, and I missed race #3 because of a conflict with my schedule. It's a challenging course with its first and third-mile roller-coaster hills. Since my 5k times are slipping anyway, I have difficulty running it in under 30 minutes. My official finishing time today was 30:09, the best of the three races I did, but only by a few seconds. Race Name: Friday Food Truck 5k Race #4 Location: Clover, South Carolina (Kings Mountain State Park) Date: August 16, 2024 Course: Splits: Weather at Start: Click Here for Race Results Click

What a blessing to once again run a half marathon with my grandson, Ryan! This year, he's exactly half my age—36, and I'm 72! This was the first half marathon we've run together since 2016 when we ran the Knoxville Half Marathon for the fifth straight year. Ryan's a great athlete, having been an outstanding football and baseball player in high school and going on to play college baseball. He's still in great shape but limits his running to no more than 5 miles. That's probably not ideal training for running a half marathon, but I appreciate his willingness to humor his old grandpa.  This race replaces The Scream! Half Marathon, which was one of my all-time favorite races. In that race, we parked at the same place (Brown Mountain Beach Resort), took a bus to the top of the mountain, and then ran down the mountain, making it one of the fastest races around.  We started the race together, and he seemed happy to join me in my normal run/walk routine. The race is alm

Well, that was interesting. In my zeal to run at least 20 half marathons this year, I found this one at the last minute and signed up. It was only about 100 miles away, so I could click off another half marathon with just a couple hours of driving.  I signed up right away, not bothering to read the race description. The next day (the day before the race), I found out it was a singletrack trail complete with plenty of roots, rocks, and obstacles that a roadrunner like myself is not used to running.  It was hot and muggy, with a dew point of 75, although being a warm-weather runner, I'd prefer that over 40 degrees any day. Before hitting the actual trail, the race began on a dirt road, and I could have stopped to walk but decided to try to keep running until I saw someone else walking. The green lines on the graph below represent walk breaks, so you can see that I didn't take a walk break until I was more than 2 miles into the race. By about 5 miles into the race, I was done. I w

Touted as the "Hottest Half Here," the Run the South Half Marathon lived up to its billing this year. The temperature at the beginning of the race wasn't unbearable at 77 degrees, and even the humidity wasn't 100% (it was 88% according to the weather app). I think maybe the culprit was the dew point, although I don't know what it was. I do know that I was sticky and sweaty before the race and didn't even do a warmup.  I'm not sure I've explained how I use the Jeff Galloway Run Walk Run technique. I keep my watch set to alert me every 20 seconds, so I can run 20 seconds then walk 20 seconds, and that's how I do most of my training. In races, I run however many 20-second intervals I'm comfortable with and then just walk 20 seconds in between, so I may run three 20-second intervals (1 minute) or six 20-second intervals (2 minutes) then walk 20 seconds before running again. I just go by what feels right at the time, so if I'm going downhill I m

I'm not running many 5k's these days, but this one is an exception. It's a series of four 5k races held at Kings Mountain State Park on the 3rd Friday of each month during the summer. It's a good time to meet up with some of the runners I see less often these days, and it's a lot of fun except that it's a hilly and difficult 5k and most people are slower than in most other 5k's. The course is out-and-back, and the 1st and 3rd miles are rolling and curvy hills on the road that leads into the state park. The second mile is fairly level, so that helps. Once again, I was a little over 30 minutes, finishing in 30:22, which is not terribly disappointing on this course although last year I managed to finish in under 30 minutes in each of the four races. Oh, it was 88 degrees at the start of the race, which adds to my arsenal of excuses for being slow! Race Name: Friday Food Truck 5k #2 Location: Clover, South Carolina Date: June 21, 2024 Course: Elevation by Mile:

Back during the years when I was doing my best running (2009-2017), the half marathon was my favorite race distance. During those years, I ran as many as 16 half marathons per year, and on an age-graded basis, the half marathon was my best distance. In more recent years I had trouble running long distances, so I cut the number of half marathons down and almost quit running them entirely. When my streak of 120 half marathons in a row under 2 hours ended in September 2022, I considered never running another half. It wasn't so much that finishing in over 2 hours was shameful, but I began having difficulty running the distance.  I turned 71 in February 2023 and had only run two 5k races after the previously mentioned September half marathon. Not being a cold weather runner anyway, I waited until April of 2023 to run another 5k, and by then my 5k times were slower than ever. I wasn't enjoying the races any longer, and when I began having a hard time keeping up with my younger runnin