The Old Runner

This was our third time to run the Komen NC Foothills Race for the Cure 5k. Originally we were planning to run the Hopebuilders 5k in Charlotte, partly because it's a little closer and also just for some variety, but when I found out my old high school buddy John Cushing was going to run it with his wife Diane, we decided to come back to Hickory to run the Komen race. It was John and Diane's first race and they decided to go along with the untimed runners and stay together, which is probably a great decision for their first race, and they finished standing up and smiling, so I'm hoping they liked it enough to catch the running bug. For me, of course, I'm a little on the competitive side so I lined up as close to the front as I could behind a flock of determined 10-year-olds. I knew that I'd spend the first half mile dodging them, which I did, but before long things cleared out and I could count the runners ahead. I could see that I was 11th overall and thought i...

This was our second trip to the Komen Foothills Race for the Cure in Hickory. It was Race #6 for me two years ago and a hundred races later it was nice to revisit, but especially nice to reflect on the fact that I’ve been able to keep running over that two-year period of time with no major setbacks. Linda and I both feel better than we’ve ever felt and both of us ran considerably faster in this race than we did when we were two years younger. My time today was 21:29, which was almost 5 minutes faster than my 26:24 time two years ago. One of the nice things about this race is that it begins and ends in the street right in front of the Lutherhaus Apartments, where my 84-year-old stepmother lives, so we were able to walk over and visit after the race. We also spent some time at the race with some of my very best friends from the hippie era, Ken and Lila, whose 35-year-old daughter was running her third 5k. Oddly enough, Ken and Lila are no longer hippies, and stranger still, I had to loo...

Race #100 didn’t really feel a lot different than the first 99 except for the fact that I rolled out of bed a little more slowly after the clock went off at 4 a.m. I turned off the clock and didn’t feel the urgency of getting that hundredth race in before my self-imposed deadline of Labor Day Weekend, which will be my second anniversary as a runner. I turned over to just “rest my eyes” for another minute or two, or fifty-five as the case may be. When I woke up again the clock read 4:55, and I thought about it for a minute, then decided there’s still time to make the race. The choice was between the Greekfest 5k in Charlotte and the HCA Knights 5k in Hickory. We decided on Hickory since it’s smaller (375 finishers today as opposed to 900 in Charlotte) and Hickory is the town where I grew up and the place I still consider my home town even though I’ve been gone for 30 years. It’s still always fun for me to race in Hickory so I can keep an eye out for people I used to know. Not that I’ve...

It’s been more than 30 years since I moved away from Hickory, and since I left they’ve installed dozens of new hills and a new heating system that worked like a charm today. Ever since I started running and heard that Hickory had a half marathon I wanted to run it, but last year I was sidetracked by the Grand Prix series in Charlotte that has a race on the same weekend. This year I’m skipping Charlotte’s Grand Prix series because of several scheduling conflicts I’ve had, and when Bob Duckworth, who is an old friend from high school as well as general manager of Cheerwine, one of the sponsors of the race, offered me four free entries I jumped at the chance to torture myself for free! Before the race we met up with some running friends — Sharon Davis from Albemarle and her friend Rita, and also  Drew Walker  from Greenwood, South Carolina. We also saw Kim Oates from Shelby, who said for some reason she couldn’t talk any of the other Shelby runners into coming over and tackling ...

In the immortal words of Randy Jackson, “You know I’m a fan, but it was just all right for me Dog.” Sad to say that compared to last year’s Home Run Trot, which was one of my favorite races of the whole year, this one seemed a little pitchy (no pun intended). As we drove up to the stadium about 40 minutes before the start of the race, the first thing I noticed was that there was only a fraction of the crowd in attendance compared to last year. We soon found out that this year they decided to have the Girls on the Run race after the 5k. That was disappointing because, although they weren’t counted in with the regular runners, last year the hundreds of girls ran along with the other runners in the 5k and with all of their friends and families in attendance the crowd support was great. This year, not so much. Last year as I entered the stadium and ran down the third base line I received an ovation that sounded like I just hit a grand slam. This year, it was more like a sacrifice bunt. Ok...

With all the traveling to races that we’ve been doing lately, it was nice to just be able to stay home and go to a local race this weekend. Pickin’s were slim in the Charlotte area, but when I found out there was a race in Hickory I was happy to head up to my old hometown for a run. Actually, this was a 5k race and a 10k race, but very few people ran the 10k. Linda and I had both planned on the 10k but when we found out there were only about 20 people running 10k we thought it might be more prudent to go with the 5k crowd. I use the term “crowd” loosely because there were only 56 finishers in the 5k race, so with only 20 finishers in the 10k the total number of runners was only 76. I’m happy either way though, large or small, because each has its advantages and disadvantages. I do think the directors of this race would probably make life easier for everybody if in the future they would just make it a 5k and do away with the 10k. The courses for the 5k and 10k seemed to be kind of inte...

This was the 10th annual CityKids VBS (Vacation Bible School) 5k sponsored by First Baptist Church in Hickory. For Linda and I, it was our second race in 12 hours and a 50-mile drive after getting home at almost midnight after last night’s China Grove race, but I always look forward to running in Hickory, the place where I grew up and still consider my hometown even though I’ve been gone for 30 years. From the parking lot where we registered for the race I could look across the block at the corner of 3rd Avenue, where my family lived when we came from New Jersey in 1964. It’s now just an empty field, but I always re-live those Wonder Years memories anytime I pass by that spot. At the start of the race we ran down a couple of blocks, hung a right just before the railroad tracks, and were met by the deafening rumble of a freight train heading through town. It was strange to hear nothing but footsteps a couple minutes later after the train had passed. The race course twisted and turned ...

It was my first race in Newton and I’d been looking forward to it for a while. Having grown up in nearby Hickory, I had always heard of the “Old Soldiers Reunion” in Newton. It’s one of the oldest events of its type in the country, having begun in 1889 and held annually ever since except for two years in the 1940s when it was canceled due to a polio outbreak. The 5k part of the festival is fairly new, relatively speaking, but this was the 19th annual 5k race. It was also a special race for me because I lived in Newton for a year or two about 1966. It was the town where I sowed the wildest of all my wild oats as a 14-year-old rebel without a real cause back in 1966. It was more than I or anyone else could handle, and before my 15th birthday it landed me in Stonewall Jackson Training School, where they had a way of getting things like that out of your system. I’ll save the details for my never-to-be-published autobiography, but suffice it to say that on those rare occasions when I visit...