The Old Runner

This Memorial Day we were back in Huntsville for the Cotton Row Run, the last stop for the Running Journal Grand Prix season. It was already hot and steamy at 7:30 a.m. for the start of the 10k, and the heat was even more oppressive for the 9:00 a.m. 5k start, which Linda ran. Not too far into the first mile I considered just dropping out since I had a lead in the 55-59 age group of more than 100 points in the Grand Prix, but I figured instead I'd just take it a little easy and walk all of the water stops, which is what I did. I think all of the walking might have helped my time since I ended up winning my age group in the race with a time of 44:42. It was a minute or so slower than last year's time when I finished 3rd in my division but the heat seemed to take a lot out of the other runners as well. The Cotton Row Run has been a Memorial Day fixture in Huntsville for more than 30 years and is one of Alabama's premier road races. With around 4,000 runners in the 10k and 5...

I could write a whole book about this race. Fortunately for my readers, I just drove 400+ miles from Huntsville to Gastonia and I’m so exhausted and it’s so late that I’ll limit my enthusiasm to just a few sentences. Runner’s World ranked this race as one of the Top 100 road races in the United States, and it really was a spectacular race. Almost every aspect was outstanding. The 10k had 2,048 finishers and the 5k almost as many. Most notably for me, this was the final race of the Running Journal Grand Prix. I finished 3rd of 82 runners in my age group in this one, and for the season finished in the top 3 runners in all seven RJ Grand Prix races that I ran, and at the awards ceremony I received a plaque as “Male Grand Masters Champion” for the year (that’s ages 50-59)! I’d love to take a few minutes here to blow my horn, but it’s lights out in 20 minutes so I’ll just say it’s a biggy for me. I won’t be chosen for the next Olympics and probably won’t knock the top out of the New York C...

The  Vulcan Run  is one of Alabama’s premier running events and one of the most popular 10k races in the Southeast. It was also the third race in the  Running Journal  Grand Prix series so naturally I thought it made sense to travel the 375 miles one way to Birmingham, Alabama, rather than to run the popular Dowd YMCA race this year in Charlotte. We woke up Friday morning, packed our bags, and headed south on I-85. Things were going smoothly and we hoped to arrive in Birmingham early in the afternoon so we would have a little time to explore the town. About 30 miles north of Atlanta our plans were rudely interrupted when an uninvited piece of plywood decided to jump off the truck in front of us and join us instead. Before we had time to react, the full force of the plywood smacked directly into the front of our car and a fraction of a second later it smashed the windshield into a thousand pieces. Linda and I were both in shock and covered with broken glass fragments...