The Old Runner

Oops... It's been five days since the Turkey Trot and it keeps slipping my mind that I'm supposed to write a blog entry about it. I'm preoccupied with other things and I'm not really in blog mode but, as usual, I figure I can write a little something for at least as long as I can keep running. There's no big news and I'm slower than I was last year, finishing this year's Turkey Trot about a minute and a half slower than last year (35:02 this year as opposed to 33:13 last year, which is my 8k PR). I knew going in that I'd be slower. I guess I shouldn't be terribly disappointed since I finished 2nd out of 50 runners in the 60-64 age group and 232nd overall out of 4,233 runners, which is in the top 6% overall. For some reason over the past month I seem to have one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel and things haven't gotten any better. Since I've run 198 races now I'd really like to finish out 2012 with exactly two mo...

This is the only race I've never missed -- five straight years now beginning in 2008 just a couple months after I began running. For every one of the first four years it was my fastest 5k race of the year. Although I haven't been in exactly miserable shape, I knew I wasn't in great shape and there was little chance that I could beat the 20:31 time I ran early in 2012 at the Cupid's Cup 5k in Charlotte, and even less chance of being in the neighborhood of last year's Santa Scramble time of 19:42. I actually thought about just skipping the Santa Scramble this year since I'm planning on running the Turkey Trot this coming Thursday, but I figured I might as well see how far I've fallen in the past year. Turns out I've fallen quite a bit, with this year's time of 21:14 being 1:32 slower than just a year ago and my second slowest Santa Scramble time ever, with the 2008 race being the only one slower, and I had only been running for a couple months at t...

Even though this race is only a couple miles from where I live, this was only the second time I have run it. Honestly, I had kind of avoided it over the last couple years since they had 10-year age groups and as I was approaching 60 I didn't like being stuck competing in an age group with people who were as much as nine years younger than me. There's a huge difference in being 50 years old and being 59 years old, whether you're a runner or not, but especially in age group competition. This year the race organizers changed it to 5-year age groups, which to me is a great improvement. I'm 60 now so I would have been at the bottom of the 60-69 age group, but I don't really take any pleasure in beating up on a 69-year-old either, and if you're 69 you most likely don't want to have to worry about the 60-year-olds, so it should be a welcome improvement for anybody who cares about age-group competition. I don't know the history of every race in Gaston County...

This week I decided to stay close to home and run the hometown Pumpkin Pi 5k. This race is sponsored by the Cancer Services of Gaston County and it replaced the popular Labor Day 5k that's been held for several years in the same location. The course is still the same but I'm sorry to say the race fell flat in most other ways. In the two previous years that I ran the Labor Day 5k there were more than 300 runners who participated. As near as I could tell there were 58 in this one [there were actually 84 finishers] , assuming the printout I saw after the race was correct. I also have a feeling that was the last time I'll see the results, although I did hear someone say they'd try to get them on the website. [Note: The race results actually showed up within a week on Athlinks, so they actually did a good job getting the results up!] The awards were nice, especially the overall and Masters awards. The age group awards were clear plastic medals (Plexiglass maybe?) and the...

After spending a good portion of last week's half marathon run in Myrtle Beach sounding like I was coughing up a lung, I decided to maybe take a couple weeks off from racing and give my body some time to recover. I had already registered for the Spinx Half Marathon but was about 95% sure I wouldn't feel good enough to run it. I woke up Monday morning with the intention of taking Linda to the doctor to get checked out. After running the Myrtle Beach half she had taken a tumble after tripping over something while exiting the finishers corral and from her symptoms it seemed like she might have a rib fracture. The doctor agreed and for the next six to eight weeks she'll be out of commission as far as running is concerned. While we were at the doctor's office I decided to see if they could fit me in he could shed some light on why I've been coughing so much over the past month. The doc decided to do a spirometry (lung function test) and I wasn't able to complet...

What a beautiful weekend for a race at the beach! With high temperatures in the mid-70s and zero percent chance of rain it was about as perfect as it could could be for the Myrtle Beach Mini Marathon (13.1 miles). Linda and I had planned on skipping this race and instead run next week's Spinx Half Marathon in Greenville, but a lot of our friends from the Gaston County Runners were going to the beach so we decided to head that way too. We all had a great time. The GCR is a fantastic group of supportive runners. It's not an organized running club and nobody's really in charge, but nobody has to be. We have several runs each week that are organized through Facebook and it's not unusual to have 20 or more runners come out. The race course for the Mini Marathon was a nice improvement over the course we ran two years ago. Instead of starting at the mostly abandoned original outlet mall in Myrtle Beach with a route that included a large bridge over the Intracoastal Wat...

After a month of wandering around aimlessly from week to week and sleeping in on Saturday mornings (that part was actually kinda nice), today I ran my first race in a month and, surprisingly, I seem to still be intact. I had initially planned to also take this week off, then run a 5k next week and see how it went, but all week I felt pretty good and was able to step up my speed some so I decided to try out my hammy a week earlier. I don't know much about hamstring injuries other than people say they seem to hang on forever. I'm starting to get the idea about that. It first began with a kind of audible "pop" in my leg as I was doing speed work about three months ago, and since then it has flared up two more times -- once in a race and again at a speed work session. During all three of those flare-ups it's been hard to run afterwards for a few days but then I seem to be okay other than just enough dull pain to know it's still there. I've managed to keep ...