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...