The Old Runner

It's one of the oldest races in North Carolina, and The Great Waldensian Footrace sets itself apart from the crowd in a couple of ways: (1) With the race-day registration price (without a shirt) of just 6 bucks, it's by far the least expensive race I know of; and (2) it's the only race I know that gives awards 5-deep in 5-year age groups. I recently added another item on my race rating list to add or subtract points for unusual items like these and I'm adding 10 points for the unbelievable $6 race-day registration price and another 5 points for the 5-deep age group awards. I have mixed feelings about the age-group awards. It's kind of excessive to have so many awards for so few runners, but it does provide a way for runners who never get a chance to win an age group award the best chance of any race to walk away with a trophy -- and they're really nice trophies compared to those handed out in other races. I wish that the races with thousands of participants ...

This is a photo of the start of the 5k (don't have a pic of the 10-miler start). My son Joe recently became an Anthropology professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, so of course I picked a weekend to go and visit him when there would be a local race to run. I found this 10-miler just north of Lansing. It was a fairly small race but well organized and there were a lot of fast runners there. Usually when I run a race 700+ miles away from home I don't know anybody there, but my wife Linda ran and so did Joe, while Joe's fiancee Kandus took some great photos. In addition to that, my good running buddy Bob Nelson just happened to be in East Lansing for a wedding and he and his wife Patty decided to surprise us by showing up at the race! I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw them standing there as we approached the race site! Besides being a good friend Bob is also one of my biggest competitors, so I was kind of relieved when he told me he was running the 5...

I wouldn't normally drive 100 miles to run a race on a hot Saturday evening in July, but this is a special race, being the USA Track and Field North Carolina State Championship 5k. There weren't any good races in the Charlotte area this weekend so we decided to head over to Winston-Salem and check out the Beat the Heat 5k for the first time. The temperature was somewhere around the mid-80's for the 7 p.m. start, which is pretty hot but it could have been worse, and there was no threat of thunderstorms so that's good. I'm not a current member of the USATF so I wasn't eligible to win one of those awards, but of course I wanted to be competitive. I did manage to win the 60-64 age group but was beaten by two particularly fast runners in the 65-69 age group. I also managed to aggravate a minor hamstring issue I've had for the past week, so it wasn't my finest moment. There was $7,000 in prize money up for grabs to the top overall runners and most of the t...

To say there's not much advance promotion for this race is an understatement. There's no website or even a Facebook page, which could be set up for free in about 5 minutes. I couldn't even find an address for it until I saw that somebody on Facebook had posted the address of the Roses store in Morganton. Having said all that, it was their 20th annual race and word of mouth over the years has resulted in it becoming a popular race even without any promotion. It's a nighttime race, beginning at 9:30 p.m. There are enough street lights that the entire out-and-back course is lit pretty well except in just a handful of areas. There aren't any hills at all and no turns to slow you down so it should be a really fast course, but most nights in the middle of July are hot and muggy and that generally slows things down. On this night it was really muggy, resulting in several people dropping out, and there was also at least one runner who needed an ambulance. From what I'...

This was my third time to run the Huntersville Family Fitness & Aquatics (HFFA) Firecracker 5k but the first time in three years. There was one noticeable difference from the two previous races: the race this year was less than half the size that it was then. In 2009 there were 401 finishers and in 2011 a whopping 471 finishers, but this year only 152 crossed the finish line. I'm not sure why the race has shrunk so drastically, but possibly the result of new races that have sprung up since then, most notably the Run for Your Life Spectacular 4-Miler and the Charlotte Firecracker 5k, which are both fairly new and popular races (although the Charlotte Firecracker 5k was canceled at the last minute this year because of severe thunderstorms). Anyhoo, this is an enjoyable race on a good course and if nothing else it was nice to be able to compare my present running times with those from previous years. This year my time of 21:19 was a little slower than 2011 (20:23) but a little f...

This was the 2nd annual "Fighting ALS with Jay 5k" held for Jay Tolar, who now lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Last year's race was held in San Antonio, Texas, where Jay was living at that time. This year's race was handled by Start2Finish Event Management, which with their great use of technology is becoming one of my favorites. Every race they've done that I've been a part of has been outstanding as far as timing, quick results, great finish line, etc., and this one was no exception. Pros: Nice size -- Not too big and not too small (287 finishers). Immediate printout of your race results as soon as you finish. Nice finish on middle school track. Nice medal for age group winners. Finish line video for all runners posted on YouTube... Cons: No complaints other than the sound on the video (you might want to turn your volume down). Click Here for Race Results My Stats: Time:  21:34 Pace:  6:57 Age Group: 1 of  6 Overall:  17 of ...

The Rhododendron Run 10k is now in its 37th year, making it one of North Carolina's oldest road races. It's held on the weekend of Bakersville's Rhododendron Festival, and this year it was chosen to be the RRCA State Championship 10k road race. I've wanted to run this race for several years but never have because it's not easy to get to from Gastonia. This year though, since it was the state championship, Linda and I made the trip up the mountain and spent the night in nearby Spruce Pine in one of the 50-year-old motels in the area. It was the weekend of our 35th wedding anniversary so it was a good time to get away for a couple days. Being in the mountains the course was far from flat, but after looping around the town for the first mile the remainder of the race was an out-and-back through the countryside so whatever hills you climbed you got to go back down them on the return. Pros: Beautiful setting:  It's hard to beat running a road race through a ...