The Old Runner

After two straight weeks of no races, it was a pleasure to wake up early on this Saturday morning and head to a race. January is probably the month with the fewest races so there aren't a lot to choose from but this is a good small-town race close to home. The Alyce T. Guettler Hunger Run has been held now for 32 consecutive years, which I'm guessing would make it one of the oldest races in the state of South Carolina. It's well organized and things seem to run smoothly, but it's a little old-school, and to me one of the drawbacks is that there is very little online information about the race. There's no website but if you look hard enough you get enough information to find your way there. As I write this at 9 p.m. the night of the race I still can't find the official results, but I've got a busy day scheduled tomorrow so I'll add results later on when they show up. [Note: After I posted this Stan Austin sent me a link to the results, which were up on ...

I feel like a complete underachiever since almost every other runner I know ran either an ultramarathon or a full marathon this morning, but I did manage to finish 1st of 17 in the 50-59 age group (less than two months from my 60th birthday) and 17th of 196 overall at the 9th Annual Resolution Half Marathon in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. This is a particularly hilly area near Paris Mountain and last year it was my second slowest half marathon out of the thirteen half marathons I ran, so my goal going in was to at least run better than I did last year. It ended up well, with this year's time being over 7 minutes faster than last year. The weather was spectacular for January 7th with the temperature in the mid 40s at the beginning of the race to around 60 degrees at the finish -- much better than last year's bone-chilling 22 degrees at the start of the race that was cold and windy throughout. This is a fun race that's organized well by the local YMCA. They announced a...

I didn't really have any big plans for a race on New Year's weekend, but on Thursday night when Stan Austin mentioned on Facebook that the ultra run in Morganton was adding a marathon and half marathon option at the last minute, I jumped at the chance to get one final half marathon in for the year. If you're scoring at home, you may remember that I had intended to run a half marathon every month in 2011. It didn't quite work out because I got sidetracked in November, but I managed to run a couple during two months and with this one on the last day of the year I ended up with 13 for 2011. I'll keep trying to run 10 or 12 half marathons a year as long as I can. Right now it's my favorite distance since it provides plenty of challenge while not requiring any extra training. Since the marathon and half marathon were just added in the final week with no advertising at all, they were both tiny races, with only 6 runners in the marathon and 12 in the half marathon...

I had heard a lot about this race from others who have run it in the past and the reviews were always good, so we headed over to the Mooresville area to experience it for ourselves. It actually exceeded our expectations, being just about a perfect race except for a glitch in putting down the cones or marking the course or something (I never figured out what exactly). The result was that the race was quite a bit longer than a 5k. According to several other people I talked to, they all had Garmin measurements of between 3.38 and 3.40 miles although personally my Garmin measured only 3.25. I don't check distances as I'm running, but I usually have a pretty good feel for how fast I'm running and I felt like I might have been somewhere between about 20:45 and 21:00, so as I approached the finish line and saw the clock at 22 minutes I was surprised. My final time of 22:39 still won my age group (55-59) and everybody else seemed to think they would have been about 2 minutes fast...

The Columbia Half Marathon is one of 22 races in the USRA Half Marathon Series held in cities around the country. It was the 12th half marathon in my quest to run at least one half marathon each month in 2011. Uh, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this or not but I missed the half marathon I had scheduled for November because we had company, and according to my wife Linda, "Nobody cares about that streak but you." After I thought about it for a minute I realized she was right, so I skipped it. No big deal really, because she's right. I'll still try to run a half marathon every month if there's one that I'm able to run, but I won't get too bent out of shape if there's not one, and some months maybe I'll run more than one. Beginning with this race I've got a brand new Race Rating system in place. I believe it's much more objective than my original rating method since it's mostly yes or no (you can see the details below). I decide...

We were able to sleep in today since this week's race was a rare afternoon event. You'd think Charlotte Motor Speedway would be a great place for a road race, and it does have certain advantages such as being private property so you don't have to worry about clearing off the public streets at a certain time, but this was the second race we've run at the speedway and one drawback of both races has been the parking situation. That seems a little odd since there are probably 50,000 parking spaces or so -- surely more than any other location in the Charlotte area -- but sometimes more is not better. There were parking attendants directing people on where to park, but our parking spot was probably about a half mile from where race registration was taking place. We arrived around 2:30, which was 30 minutes before race time. We were able to jog down and make it in time, but it's still nice to be able to park more closely. In the end, it hardly mattered that we parked a...

It's taken me a week to get around to writing about this race, partly because I've spent all week trying to get caught up with the work I got behind on while on vacation, and partly because there's no way I can do it justice. This was just a small 5k, not unlike you would find anywhere else although since it was in Honolulu, just across the street from Waikiki Beach, it will go down as one of the most memorable and special races I've run. To make things even more special, my son Joe, who we were visiting, also ran the race. He's not a runner so a 3.1 mile race is definitely a challenge for him, but he did great and finished 3rd in his age group. I'm hoping that one day all of my kids will make running a daily part of their life. Hey, you gotta try to stay in shape somehow and there's no better way to do it. I'm still pressed for time (another race this afternoon!) so I'll shut up and let the pictures tell the story. We arrived early to make sur...