The Old Runner

After 15 years of having fun (mostly) at the races, it's finally time for me to hang up my running shoes. The last race I blogged about was #574, but I ran two more after that: the Ocean Isle Beach Half Marathon on October 25, 2024, and the Police Donut 5k the following week on November 2, 2024. After the half marathon, I felt generally fine, but the following week, I began having some back pain. I managed to run the Donut 5k without too much of a problem and felt pretty good despite having to eat a half dozen donuts halfway through the race. The day after the donut race, I took the day off since my back was hurting, and my right leg had also become painful. To make a long story short, over the next couple of weeks, I became unable to walk or even stand without extreme pain. I ended up seeing an orthopedic surgeon, who did an MRI that revealed a stress fracture in my right tibia, and a spine doctor, whose MRI showed a severely pinched nerve at L4. I ended up in a wheelchair for the...

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...

Another local 5k, this one at Gaston College, was my 5th race in the series, for which I have to run six races to qualify for the end-of-season awards. There weren't any nearby half marathons, so it fit nicely into my schedule. Looking back at my races, I saw that I hadn't run this race since 2021 when I finished in 25:16, so it's unsurprising that I finished about 3 minutes slower 3 years later (28:11). Ouch. Losing about a minute per year in my 5k times. I probably shouldn't complain about being slower, though, and I should just be happy I can still run. Looking back at my Garmin data, I saw that I walked 18 times, which is a lot of walking for a 5k race. Still, the data shows that I only walked around 3 minutes total, so maybe it's not so bad. One bit of data that I haven't paid much attention to is my Heart Rate Zones (on the graph below). Seeing that 62% of my run was in Zone 5 (Maximum) makes me think that if I watched my heart rate and kept it in Zone 4 (...

With a couple of 5k races in the local race series over these two weeks and no nearby half marathons, I decided to take a little break from the longer races. I ran this same race last year and it's nice and flat(ish), so I was hoping to run a better time than in the hilly food truck races that I've done over the past few months. The result was that I did better (27:22), but nothing to jump up and down about. As much as I'd like to nudge back down into the 24- to 25-minute range in a 5k, that might not be happening for me. Just like last year, my main age group competitor was a local high school cross-country coach who is a couple years older than me. Also, just like last year, we jockeyed for position several times during the race, and I managed to squeak by him with about 20 seconds to spare.  Last year's race had some great free photographs that I didn't see until I registered for this year's race. Eight days after the race, there are still no photos on the we...

Lord knows I'm not a trail runner, although I've been trying to impersonate one for the last few months. In July, I ran the Harbison Trail Half Marathon, the first singletrack trail half marathon I've ever run. In retrospect, I kind of enjoyed it even though I was slow and spent most of the time just trying not to trip over a rock or a tree root. I did the same thing in this race; just hoping I didn't trip and break an ankle or do a faceplant. Luckily, I came out unscathed and didn't fall or twist anything that shouldn't be twisted.  The U.S. National Whitewater Center is about a 15-minute drive from my house. It has 50+ miles of trails, but I haven't been there in over 10 years because trails have never appealed to me. This week, they had the only half marathon within 100 miles, and since I'm trying to run every half marathon I can reasonably get to this year, I figured I'd give it a go.  From what I've heard, the trail races at the Whitewater C...

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...