Racing Around

09/18: Oktoberfest 5K

2010-09-28T09:12:00.003-05:00

I have friends – hold on, that wasn’t meant to be the news flash – I have friends who run Addison’s Oktoberfest 5K every year which is how I’ve come to run that race the past three years. Which is problematic when it comes to writing about the race, as it’s just sort of a generic 5K and there’s not that much I could say about this year’s race – except that I sucked, big time – that I haven’t said about it before so instead of running from the problem, I guess I’ll just embrace it and look at how this race compares to the previous editions. God only knows what gimmick I’m going to be reduced to for next year’s race – maybe it’ll rain. That would be different. Unpleasant, but different.

The course hasn’t changed in the three years I’ve been running the race; the main feature is still the Arapaho Road bridge, which provides the only hills on the course – one going out and one coming back. So it’s really the same hill only in different directions, but it seems like a longer hill running to the west and a steeper hill running to the east. So, really, it’s not quite the same hill; it’s more like they’re mirror images of each other.

On the one hand, the weather was at least slightly different from the previous two years but that was mostly a bad thing – the temperature at race time was near eighty, as opposed to the mid-sixties of the past two years. The humidity was over 80% all three years so while that sucks, it’s a fairly even suckage across the three races.

They still have free beer and soft pretzels after the race, so that’s a bonus. As I was trying to get a pretzel out of the bag, it got hung up on another pretzel and I said, “damn, they’re fornicating.” Then I looked at the volunteer to see if she was offended but she actually seemed mildly amused. So that was a bonus, too.

The race may or may not have grown over the past few years. In 2008 it looks like there were about 900 finishers, last year there were about 1300, and this year almost 1400. But those only include the timed participants and somewhere along the line – I’m guessing in 2009 – they switched from chips to disposable tags, which, since disposable tags come on your bib number while you have to make a special effort to pick up your chip, I’d think that more people actually use the tags.

Your bib number still gets you into Oktoberfest for free which is an even better value these days – the Oktoberfest cover charge is now ten bucks, up from five sometime in the recent past. However, and this is kind of an important point, should you lose your bib number sometime between leaving the race and showing up in the evening at Oktoberfest, looks like you (i.e., me) are forking over the ten bucks if you want to get inside and meet your friends.

09/11: James Page Blubber Run

2010-09-17T15:45:00.003-05:00

The biggest mistake I made Saturday at the James Page Blubber Run was not turning in both my beverage coupons on my first pass through the beer line, which was only theoretically a line when I first visited since many of the eventual beer drinkers were still somewhere out on the course - perhaps at the beer stop just past the second mile marker. Or perhaps not; rumor had it that they ran out of beer there early. At any rate, early on the servers were more than able to keep up with the demand. By the time I finished my first beer, that wasn't so much the case any more: I got into the beer line a little before 11:30 and I got my beer a little after noon. Which isn't to complain so much as it is to illustrate that many people ran the James Page Blubber Run and many of those people drink beer.

Which isn’t to say I wasted a half hour waiting to get another James Page Burly Brown Ale - the Blubber Run is like the Opening Day of the Halloween season and the beer line is a promising vantage point for admiring the various costumes. I saw superheroes and crayons and cartoon characters and nuns and movie characters and Mr. Bill (extremely well done) and Oktoberfesters and Where’s Waldo (not so well done, I thought it was Mr. Bill’s lesser brother) and cowpeople and transvestite Oktoberfesters and Vikings (both pillagers and football players) and bees (one with her own personal beekeeper) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hooters Girls (unless they really were Hooters girls – they were plausible – in which I case I guess that doesn’t count as a costume) and cavepeople (including two Fred Flintstones) and Larry Bird (albeit with a mustache that looked more like a Got Milk? Ad) and Velma from Scooby Doo, although I’m not sure that was a costume. Not to mention the cute, scantily-clad jungle girl slightly in front of me in the beer line although those damn Vikings kept wandering into my line of sight.

It may sound like running was an afterthought, which is accurate. The race is essentially untimed; they give awards to the top three men and women but outside of that I don’t see them having any official results since we weren’t wearing chips, our bibs had no pull tags; and we were given nothing at the finish line to turn in afterwards. Which is cool by me; I think it’s intended to be a fun, as opposed to competitive, event but – and this is the consumer advice portion of the post – if you’re more interested in a precisely-timed and accurately-measured, perhaps even certified, course, look elsewhere. If not, c’mon down! If the running seems to be more than you anticipated and three miles and change is a bit far to go without a beer break, don’t sweat it. They also have the previously-mentioned beer corral just past the second mile marker although, again, rumor has it they ran dry.

05/13: Katy Trail 5K

2010-09-13T15:49:00.001-05:00

You'd think after nearly three months - maybe more than three months, depending on how long it takes me to actually post this - I'd have found something to say about the Katy Trail 5K, but when you throw in the caveat that I'd like whatever I blather to be at least passingly original, it don't come easy. Lord, it don't come easy. You gotta pay your dues..wait, where was I? Oh yeah, well, I've run this race nine or ten times now...wait a second...ten, according to the official runes, the last ten in a row. I guess they started it in 1999; I think this year's was the twelfth. It doesn't change much from year to year; it's usually warm, humid and crowded, and this year it was warm, humid, and crowded. It's kind of amazing, actually, that so far as I can remember it's never rained on the race or picnic despite May being an opportune month for thunderstorms.

I shot my wad early in this one - my first mile was 7:21 and after that there was jogging and some walking, mixed in with walking and jogging. The course was the same as in recent years - Turtle Creek Boulevard to Blackburn to Cole to Elizabeth to the Katy Trail to the finish - and I walked part of the hill at Blackburn. Which is earlier in the race than usual but I wasn't in peak condition; it's been kind of a lackluster running year thus far, and I've always hated that hill anyway. Well, I think maybe I've done a race or two where I got to run down it and I probably didn't hate it then.

The postrace picnic was massive, as usual, and crowded, also as usual. Finishing earlier to get to the food before the hordes descend should be motivation to train more seriously for this race, but to date this hasn't been the case. Partially because even running as mediocre as I did this year (26:19), I still get down to the grub while there's still elbow room. It's not until I'm making my second and third passes that the crowds are pressing up against my claustrophobic limits. Thank God for that V.I.P. thing - not only does it give me access to better beer than Michelob Ultra, I don't have to stand in line for it, either.

The other thing about this race that changes from year to year are the people I know that I run into. This year I saw one dude from Grapevine and four from Ultimate, although two of the Ultimate people were married -to each other - so they sort of count as one. Except they also had Murphy the dog with them, so he should probably count, too. Another Ultimate dude was Ed from my Winter League team a few years back, which at Ultimate he blames his lack of speed on being more of a long-distance runner than a sprinter but at races he just blames it on being slow, which he is. At least he doesn't try to blame it on Ultimate.

05/08: Lake Run 12K

2010-07-19T08:31:00.001-05:00

I'm still catching up on race reports that I've let slide the past few months so once again, in lieu of a standard report, are ten things you may, or may not, find enlightening about Portland, Oregon, or the Lake Run 12K.

1. The Lake Run 12K is actually in Lake Oswego and does, in fact, circle Lake Oswego - only for the most part not exactly in an up-close-and-personal style. The lake is rarely in sight while you're running along the course.

2. When you can't find a direct route to the race and all the roads seem to meander all over the place, it's probably due to the terrain. Expect hills.

3. If you hate hills, stay away from this race. Even if you're seeking out hills to get accustomed to them, stay away from this race because this is like aversion therapy; these aren't the sorts of hills to leave you with warm, fuzzy memories. Especially early in the race; it might just be my traumatized memory but it seems like the first 2.5 miles were pretty much all uphill. Although only the last two miles of that stretch was really bad.

4. After the initial hill ordeal, there are still major climbs lurking on the course. And you finish uphill - after a pleasant downhill (technically I'm pretty sure the course has a net elevation loss) - and while it's an insignificant uphill, it's still adding insult to injury even if the only thing injured is my ego.

5. I was afraid to say anything about the hills to the locals. I didn't want to find out that they all ran this race because it was the easiest course around.

6. The McMenamin brothers are building a brewpub empire in the great northwest, with at least some of their locations doubling as hotels and with many of their locations being in historic buildings. I've been to their Kennedy School place three times and never been disappointed. It's in an old elementary school in northeast Portland, somewhere between the Rose Garden and the airport. On the other hand I also went to their Cedar Hill location and I was slightly disappointed - it's just another bar. But with good beer, though.

7. Preserve your sanity - try not to drive too much in Portland, especially around downtown.

8. The night before the race, the Reno Aces beat the Portland Beavers, 3 - 1, in Pacific Coast League action at PGE Park. Which was odd, because Portland was dominating the game with scoring chances throughout (they had a runner thrown out at the plate, another picked off second, and they hit into two double plays) but not totally unexpected because frequently when a team wastes so many opportunities, it comes back to bite them in the ass.

9. If you're going to a Beavers game, take the train. PGE Park is on the west side of downtown and there's a light-rail station right next to the park, making it easy to avoid the hassle of driving and parking in downtown. I think it's expected - the stadium 'lot' seemed like it cold hold maybe fifty cars.

10. I've been to Mount St. Helen's twice now; once all I could do was tour the visitor's center because it was too rainy to do anything else, and this time I couldn't even do that because I got there too late. After getting in stuck in traffic coming out of Portland, of course.

05/01: White Rock'N'Roll Ten-Mile

2010-06-23T14:26:00.002-05:00

God, what the hell do I even remember about this race? We had reasonable running weather – 63 degrees and 58% humidity – not that I actually remember that; I just remember how to look these things up. And that the weather wasn’t extremely extreme in either direction; in fact the high and low both matched the May 1 average for Dallas. The course was kind of meandering; normally a length of this distance would involve circling the lake but in this case we started to the north from Winfrey Point, turned up Northcliff Drive and ran around the Peninsula neighborhood a little bit before coming back down Northcliff Drive and continuing north on East Lawther Driver, along the shore of White Rock Lake. We crossed over the north end of the lake on the new shaky bridge (which isn’t that new, except in comparison to the old shaky bridge over the spillway – which is unfortunately open again although it didn’t matter in this race since we never went near it. And it might not have been open then anyway.) and turned north onto West Lawther, which we took to the north side of Mockingbird. We ran along Mockingbird to the east side of the lake, although at this juncture we’re really on the east side of White Rock Creek; the lake is to the south, and –this I actually I remember, most of this I’m augmenting sketchy memories with the course as laid out on www.mapmyrun.com – where some stupid course marshal on a bicycle was kind of in my way at this point as there were two people I was sort of in the process of passing but didn’t really want to pass yet, but the bicycle dork kind of forced my hand. But I digress. Anyway, we came off of Mockingbird and looped down back onto East Lawther Drive, where we continued north for maybe another half mile before we finally turned around and ran back to Winfrey Point, except for when I walked in the last mile. Which wasn’t bad – I didn’t feel particularly trained for the distance but I didn’t walk until the last mile and overall my time was 1:26:45 except those bastards have it as 1:26:46.58 because they’re always screwing me out of a second here or a second there. Or even a fraction of a second; it’s all the same to them. Them in this case being the Dallas Running Club who used to be the Cross Country Club of Dallas until they realized that they didn’t really do much cross-country, well, one race a year but is that really enough to name a club after? I think not and eventually they agreed. Anyway, they put on this race and it’s kind of a big one for them – proceeds go to support the lake, which needs all the help it can get what with the Richardson ISD dumping toxic waste into it, which I’m pretty sure that’s not official Richardson ISD policy but still. So I suppose that’ll drive up the entry fees for next year which isn’t to say that I’m definitely going to do the race again next year. But I probably will.

04/03: April Fools Four-Mile Road Race

2010-06-23T11:09:00.004-05:00

Ten Notes From A Race I Barely Remember (And That There Wasn’t That Much To Say About In The First Place, Which Is Why It Took So Long To Say Anything):

1. The average high for Salisbury (well, Lawrence, actually), Massachusetts, on April 4 is 51 degrees. This year it was 66 at 11:00 in the morning (it peaked at 79 in the afternoon) but with only 48% humidity, so while it wasn’t ideal running weather, it really wasn’t that bad, either. If they had started the race at 9:00, the temperature would have still been in the mid-fifties. I would have had to wake up earlier, though – there’s always a trade-off.

2. The course had its good points and its bad points – it was an out-and-back that was mostly flat and well-shaded, but kind of boring in a scenic, suburban sort of way. The one noticeable uphill came sans shade, so that wasn’t very nice, but it was near the end so you just had to suck it up and get over it.

3. The race was staged from the Winner’s Circle, a bar in, or at least on the outskirts of, Salisbury, Massachusetts. Massachusetts, and I think New England in general, has something we could use a lot more of here in Texas – running-centric bars. Because even down here, most runners I know don’t mind the idea of a beer or two dozen after a long, hard run.

4. Celebrity of the day was Sara Hall, U.S. womens road 5K champion in 2006 and wife of Olympic marathoner Ryan. She was the first female finisher in 21:34 which means that when she was crossing the finish line, I was starting to wonder if maybe they had forgotten to put out a marker for the third mile.

5. After the race I thought, man, I could go for a beer right now – which worked out well because they had some from Harpoon Brewery.

6. There was an older gentleman running around with a neatly-trimmed beard on exactly one-half his face. I’m not sure what was up with that but going on three months later it’s still memorable. In a creepy sort of way.

7. For all the ubiquity of Starbucks, I had a tough time finding coffee before this race. Partially because I’m too much of a control freak to patronize Dunkin Donuts, where they have kind of a heavy hand with the milk.

8. My plan was to run the first two miles as hard as I could and struggle through the last two as best I could. The results overall were better than I expected – 30:50 with splits of about 7:15, 7:30, 8:00, and 8:05 – but I was hoping the first two miles would each be about fifteen seconds faster.

9. Coincidentally, I think it also took me 30:50 to finish my postrace beer. I’m pacing myself, sergeant.

10. The biggest disappointment was not getting a shirt; you had to preregister to get one. At the time I though they looked pretty cool but now I can’t remember what they looked like so, in retrospect, I guess I’m not that disappointed.

03/27: Crazy Beaver Trail Race

2010-04-30T10:27:00.003-05:00

I took first in my age group at the Crazy Beaver Ten-Mail Trail Race down at Loyd Park in Grand Prairie, which I'm not bragging about it because there's nothing to brag about it - I was the only person in my age group. Besides, as the late, great Dizzy Dean once said, it ain't bragging if it's true. And if you don't like his syntax, well, he had a few choice words about that, too. At any rate, winning my age group just meant showing up, starting the race, and finishing, all without doing anything to get myself disqualified. Piece of cake, really.

Cherry-picking races for hardware is relatively easy around her, at least in the spring and fall when there are numerous races each weekend, and if I had been so inclined, I probably would have chosen this race for that reason. But I wasn’t thinking about collecting Shiny Metal Objects after last week’s marathon; I was thinking a longer run over a softer surface sounded pleasant. And the 5K I originally thought about doing, up in Denton? Turned out that was last weekend. Besides, I didn’t even know they (where in this case they equals the city of Grand Prairie) had trails at Loyd Park – to be honest I forgot they even had a Loyd Park – so I appreciated the chance to check them out without having to pay the ten-dollar entrance fee. Instead, I only had to pay a $50 race fee.

The trails were perfect in their imperfections – they were pleasant to run on but not so awesome that I’d consider fighting my way down 360 after work and paying $10 to do so on a regular basis. What with all the precipitation we’ve had so far this year, particularly the recent maintenance rains like we got Wednesday evening that keeps the ground from drying out, the trails were muddy in a few places and had two spots where you had to quick step through ankle-deep water. Which wasn’t bad, but you had to pass through each spot twice, so it’s only half as unbad as you might otherwise think. Other than that, the trails were very good for running – shaded, wide, soft and flattish, but with enough roll to keep things interesting and personable. I think they’re up there with the Rowlett Creek trails in Garland for the best running trails in the Metroplex.

I’m pretty sure this was the inaugural running of this particular race and the people who seemed to be higher up in the organization – like the race director and his aide-de-camp – were very solicitous of feedback. I talked to the race director for a few minutes after the race – I think everybody talked to the race director for a few minutes after the race – and I meant to tell him to check out the Liart people in northwest Arkansas, as I’m pretty sure that’s the vibe he’s going for. I didn’t get a chance, though; we spent most of the time talking about the Subway store he preordered sandwiches from that was closed when he went to pick them up earlier in the morning. He wasn’t too happy about that but I didn’t think it was a big deal. He had Keebler fudge-striped cookies – who could ask for anything more?

03/21: Shamrock Marathon

2010-03-24T08:25:00.005-05:00

I have run fourteen marathons and I still don't get them, by which I guess what I really mean is I don't see the appeal. I suppose actually training for one might give me a different, although not necessarily better, perspective but to me, the marathon's greatest contribution to civilization was inspiring the half marathon - a distance I greatly prefer because it's short enough to race, long enough to challenge, and also long enough to feel like you've really gone somewhere. Even if it is just around in one big circle.

I ran the Shamrock Marathon sort of by accident, if not by mistake. A friend was looking for a spring marathon; I pointed out Shamrock and told him I'd make the trip and do the half. That presupposed that we'd register while there was still room in the half, a presupposition that proved dangerously inaccurate. Apparently I'm not the only one who prefers halfs. At any rate, I held my nose and signed up for the full; I used to think marathons were too intimidating to jump into on a whim but when you hear of all these people running multiple marathons in, like, a weekend, it kind of erodes the fear factor.

Having signed up for a marathon, an intelligent person might actually train - maybe even with legitimate long runs - but I couldn't work it into my busy schedule of Ultimate Frisbee, bitching about the cold (and the blizzards) of Dallas, and general hanging out (sometimes with ensuing hangovers). I tell you, the days were just packed. By the time I got to the starting line the morning of the race, my longest run since last December's White Rock Marathon had been 10.5 miles. Which at the time seemed like a marathon but not so much from my current perspective.

So going in, I knew it was going to be a struggle and that I was going to be doing some - as in a lot of - walking. My plan was to take one-minute walking breaks at every mile marker and stick to that schedule for as long as possible. I figured if I could make it through fifteen, I'd at least have a decent training run. As it played out, I ran the first sixteen at 8:49 (missing my walking breaks at mile one, because I never saw the marker, and mile six, because I was in traffic and stopping to walk didn't seem conducive to safety), struggled walking and running through the next four at 13:17 pace, and basically walked in the last six at 16:16 pace. It wasn't a particularly fun walk, either; the weather, which had its favorable elements early in the morning (mostly a lack of humidity), turned against us when the temperature started rising, like up into the neighborhood of seventy degrees. Clouds refused to pass in front of the sun and the course, by that point, was devoid of shade. The important thing in those circumstances is never think about how much you're paying to be there.

Beers later, the death march was just a distant memory. Which isn't to say I didn't learn a valuable lesson about the importance of preparation. Which isn't to say I did, either.

03/13: Dash Down Greenville 5K

2010-03-15T07:42:00.004-05:00

I dashed down Greenville Avenue in east Dallas for the sixth time, and fourth year in a row, and now I’m attempting to write a Dash Down Greenville story for the third time and I’m wondering what I can say about it now that I haven’t said before. It’s not like it’s the exact same experience each year – the weather changes, I change, once (last year) even the course changed (direction, mostly) – but these changes occur across a fairly narrow spectrum. I’ve run it six times and not once, say, has the race been marred by a zombie attack. Now that would be a little different.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear – I am not hoping that the Dash Down Greenville, or any race for that matter, is ever interrupted by an undead attack of any sort. All I’m saying is that if it did happen, it would at least be noteworthy. As opposed to, say, slower runners and walkers starting too close to the front, which happens all the time. Although I didn’t have as many problems with that this year as I have in years past, despite the three large-caliber people (the youngest one in jeans) who squeezed past me five minutes before the start.

My problem is, I don’t find this race that interesting but I can’t stay away, either – it’s on the morning of, and in the neighborhood of, the Dallas St. Patrick’s Day Parade, a parade which will only actually be held on St. Patrick’s Day should St. Patrick’s Day happen to fall on a Saturday. Which means 2012, if I’m working my calendar right. At any rate, I parked in the Old Town Shopping Center (across Lover’s Lane from the race staging area at Central Market) a little after seven, which was slightly later than when I wanted for what I thought was an eight o’clock start but earlier than I wanted for what turned out to be an 8:30 start. FML – just kidding! Anyway, after hanging out, running the race, hanging out some more, watching the parade, hanging out some more more, running into some friends, oozing through the human corral known as the Greenville Avenue Block Party with said friends, and finally eating and drinking at Margarita Ranch at Mockingbird Station (again with said friends), I got back to my car sometime after 5:00 in the afternoon. So it was a full, fun, action-packed day, but the race was just sort of a preamble.

I did make one poor decision regarding the race this year – immediately after I finished, I ran two easy miles to cool down (and get some mileage in), then went back to my car to change before hitting the beer (Ft. Worth’s Rahr and Sons, which may not be Shiner but isn’t Bud or Michelob Ultra, either) concession. Which, by the time I got there, had stationary lines about twenty people long. So I blew it off, chagrined, because I know that had I gone there immediately after finishing, I would have had virtually no line to deal with. Live and learn, hopefully. I mean, it’s not like I’m probably going to blow this race off next year.

02/06: Tal Morrison 15K

2010-02-26T10:40:00.002-06:00

Sometimes you have to challenge yourself. Other times, you inadvertently challenge yourself by, oh say, going out to the Flying Saucer in Addison the night before a 15K (the Dallas Running Club’s Tal Morrison 15K, to be specific), staying out way past your estimated time of departure (10:00pm), and telling yourself it was all going to be okay because you had downshifted to Michelob Ultra from the high-test brews you were drinking earlier.

It was 12:30 by the time I left the Saucer; I was home and asleep by 1:30. And awake by 5:30, thanks to my stupid alarm. I stumbled out of bed even though I really wanted to go back to sleep – not only was I tired as hell, but my head hurt and my stomach was queasy and if I slept some more maybe they’d both feel better when I woke up again. But some of the people who were at the Saucer were also supposed to be at the race, although they were doing the 5K (well, that was their plan, but they wound up bagging anyway) rather than circumnavigating White Rock Lake, and I really needed to get the miles in, so blowing the race off wasn’t an option. Well, it wasn’t an option I spent a lot of time considering, at any rate.

So, I showered and felt a little better, got my stuff together, and headed out. I also took a couple of swigs of Gatorade and they didn’t feel like they were going to make a reappearance, so that was a good sign. Good enough that I stopped by Starbucks for a sixteen-ounce coffee, which I mostly drank while driving out to Winfrey Point, which I reached early enough to get an okay parking spot. The DRC races keep getting bigger and I'm pretty sure people are having to park out in Mesquite and walk in. After registering and stretching and talking to various people, I finally got to run, which presented its own challenges – I don’t think I’ve ever had so much trouble finding a comfortable pace. I spent most of this race speeding up to a point where I’d start to feel ill, then I’d back off and inevitably start to speed up again. This went on pretty much the entire race although by the end the speed at which I’d start to feel ill was noticeably slower than it had been at the start.

Based on previous experience I expected to feel better after running – so long as I was actually able to finish the race, which I did in an acceptable (for being hungover) 1:16:44. In fact, this turned out to be true – my head didn’t hurt nearly as much and while I wasn’t hungry, I felt like hunger, not nausea, was in my immediate future. Assuming I didn’t succumb to hypothermia, first; I worked up a healthy – some would probably say excessive – sweat running around the lake and hanging out a damp t-shirt in 40 degree temperatures wasn’t feeling too comfortable. So I went to my car and changed into warmer duds, went back to Winfrey Point until the hunger pangs started kicking in, then went to Whattaburger.

01/23: Bold In The Cold 15K

2010-02-08T07:32:00.003-06:00

My split for the last mile of the the Bold In The Cold 15K was 9:44, which was surprising because usually I can feel myself slowing down; this mile didn't feel any different from the last few despite being over a minute slower. Turned out, I wasn't slowing down - that mile was about 1.14 miles long because we ran a short out-and-back that's actually part of the race organization's (Lake Grapevine Runners and Walkers) 10K course. So my pace was more like 8:30, which would be in line with what I ran over the last three or four miles.

In a perfect world course mistakes would never occur but then again, in a perfect world presidential elections would never be decided by the Supreme Court. When they do happen, it's best to just roll with them if you're a runner, or figure out the discrepancy and get the word out if you're the organizer - which, to their credit, LGRAW did. and I should probably mention that I've run maybe somewhere between ten and fifteen of their races (full disclosure: I'm also a member) and this is the first time that the course was inaccurate. They put on good events, really. Anyway, they did figure out the difference and adjusted the pace in the results - I didn't come up with that .14 figure on my own.

I don't think course accuracy for Bold In The Cold is as crucial as it is for other races - although of course you want as accurate a course as possible - because for most people it's not going to be a PR waiting to happen. First of all, it's in January, obviously, and most people (for example, me) are just starting to resume training. It's also run over a hilly course, especially compared to White Rock Lake - where most of the other area 15Ks are held.

I didn’t hang around for long after the race - there was ultimate to be played that afternoon and I needed to prepare accordingly - so I don’t know if much bitching about the course ensued or if people were even aware of the extra distance. I found out the next day, via the LGRAW Forum. I didn’t see an angry mob surrounding the race director with torches and pitchforks, saying ‘you made us run 9.46 miles, you lousy so-and-so,’ but maybe that happened later. Most runners aren’t going to care too much, so long as for the most part the event went smoothly, but there will be some who get bent out of shape. I ran the Ft. Worth Turkey Trot in 2000; the course wound up being a half mile or so long because we missed an out-and-back down a dead end that we were supposed to run. I finished just ahead of some old guy who was pissed - he paid all this money, the least they could do was have an accurate course! I couldn't relate at all. I wasn't in very good shape at the time and I didn't miss the extra half mile at all; if they had cut off another half mile or so, I'd have been even happier.

12/13: White Rock Marathon

2010-01-04T08:10:00.001-06:00

It was a good morning to run a marathon and an even better one for a half-marathon but I didn't have the option of switching races. Well, I suppose I did - what would they do, tackle me if I turned on south on Skillman or wherever the hell it was that the courses split? - but I signed up for the stupid marathon so I might as well find out what I was capable of. Sixteen miles, as it turned out, of reasonable running, three more miles of struggling running and then seven miles of run/walk to get me back to the American Airlines Center four hours and twenty minutes after I left.

Running the marathon paid one major dividend - I could justify gorging on a burger, assuming I could identify a burger worth suspending my moratorium on beef. Which really isn't all that much of a moratorium - any reasonable excuse, many weaker than a 26.2-mile run (using the term loosely) through the mean streets of Dallas, throws that rule out the window. The marathoners wearing the beef-promoting t-shirts probably had a subliminal effect on my burger desires as well.

After the race, after washing up (but not showering - bloody nipples!) , I had to choose my poison. I mean burger. Which is when it occurred to me that I don’t have a go-to burger in Dallas. Or anywhere for that matter. After weighing my options, and getting hungrier, I decided to check out the Love Shack on Seventh Street in Fort Worth. When you only eat maybe twelve burgers a year (nor counting burgers eaten at Flips after Wednesday night Ultimate in Grapevine), you don’t want to waste burger opportunities on a Big Mac or Whopper. The Love Shack is run by frou-frou chef Tim Love, and has received excellent reviews, so I went in search of an awesome burger.

I couldn’t find it. The Love Shack, that is; turned out I was looking in the wrong development. But while looking I remembered hearing good things about burgers at the Cock and Bull, in Dallas. It was only about forty miles away and I had the Chargers-Cowboys game on the radio; I had a plan. So I drove to Dallas while listening to the Chargers hold off the Cowboys and blow chances to put the game out of reach.

The Cock and Bull, according to an official-looking sign on the wall, has a maximum occupancy of 49, which it wasn't near to reaching when I got there. I ordered a something something Pale Ale while I looked over the menu. They had a Red Bull Burger, which featured red peppers rather than beef marinated in Red Bull. I found that disappointing. They had a Blue Bull Burger, which came topped with bleu cheese, and a White Bull Burger, which I can't remember how it got its name. I went with the generic Bull Burger, only I added on Swiss cheese, bacon, and mushrooms; it came on a chiabata roll and it was awesome. I mean, really good. I mean, maybe not worth running a marathon for but it easily justified at least eighteen miles. I probably should have eaten two of them to justify the entire race, but I wasn't thinking clearly at the time. After all, I had just run a marathon.

11/26: Turkey Trot

2009-11-27T18:53:00.003-06:00

So last year at the Dallas Turkey Trot they introduced the disposable (or collectible) timing chip; this year they charged five bucks over and above the registration fee if you wanted a bib number that would include one. Essentially, five bucks to be timed and included in the results. Which I wanted, although I’m not exactly sure why - my watch time was going to be reasonably close to my chip time (it looks like they differ by .12 seconds, so I paid five bucks for .12 seconds - if only I could get paid at that rate) and I wasn’t going to be competing for any age-group awards. If I wanted to know where I finished in my age group or overall, I could mentally insert myself into the results easily enough.

The five bucks bothers me more than it should, probably because it identifies the Turkey Trot more as an event - an apolitical run-in - than a race, which is what it was when it began back in 1968. Now, the race duties are an onerous task for which the race officials require additional compensation. Of course, what really bothers me is that by next year I’ll have forgotten all about this until I go to register (unless I do remember, in which case I may do some other race) at which point it’ll be too much hassle not to pay. And the grumbling will begin again.

I should point out that for all I know this isn’t actually a change - that they charged the extra $5 last year and I just didn’t think it was that big a deal. I’m not always as consistent about these things as I’d like to be.

This was my third Turkey Trot which means half of the eight-mile races I’ve run have been Turkey Trots. I don’t remember feeling as hemmed in and bothered by the press of humanity at the start before which may mean I was in a pissy mood for this race, or may be because I wasn’t in good enough shape in the previous races to care if the crowds slowed me down. This year’s race broke down into three stages - a claustrophobic first mile that took about 8;25, four strong miles that I covered in about 29 minutes, and three miles where I was hanging on that took about 23:30. Overall I ran 1:00:55, good enough for 62nd out 299 in my age group, 649 out of 2595 among all men, and 542 out of 4439 overall. I failed to break one hour, which was my high-end goal going in, but I did get my eight-mile PR, which was my more realistic goal. My previous best was 1:02:30, in or around Memphis, Tennessee, in 1996. Or maybe 1997.

It looks like about 7000, out of nearly 35,000, people paid for the timing chips. I’d be interested in knowing how many untimed people finished ahead of me but I guess there’s no way of knowing. Well, there’s probably a video you could watch and count but that would be painful.

11/21: Lake Leatherwood Trail Run

2009-11-25T07:54:00.007-06:00

I was looking at postcards in a college bookstore in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I saw one that featured a picture of an Arkansas black bear, not that I’m aware of any differences between that creature and your basic black bear. The card said that the black bear population in Arkansas once numbered 50,000 but it didn’t say what the current population was. Which was just as well, actually; I had spent two hours running a trail race up in Eureka Springs and the thought that I was running through the back yard of, say, 3000 bears would still have been unsettling.

This race - the Lake Leatherwood Trail Run, I guess - was the trailiest trail race I’ve done this year, which means it contained a few unpleasant surprises. Like a near faceplant towards the end of the fifth mile; I got my hands out in front of me to avoid smashing my head against the rock that slipped me up. Which didn’t do much to prevent me from scraping up my knee. On the bright side, I did get that fall in before I came to the stream we had to ford; running twenty feet or so through water that came up to about mid-thigh did a good job of washing the blood, mud, and leaves from my knee and shin. The water was cold, which helped wake me up, too.

Half the fun of running trails is complaining about the hardships afterwards. Actually, in some races that ratio may run as high as 90%. Pain is temporary but the bitching goes on forever. This race is part of the Northwest Arkansas Fall 2009 Trail Running Series, put on by Liart (or maybe that should be liarT) Sports and apparently the previous race, October 24th at Lake Fort Smith featured a much tougher course. So after the race everybody else was acting like they had just run an easy road 5K while I was wondering who I should see about getting my Mountain Man merit badge. Nobody, as it turns put, although I did get a little plaque - actually a little whatchamacallit to put in a plaque - that said sixth place. That’s age group sixth place and, yes, there was a seventh place.

The course was ten miles long, give or take, and hilly and rocky but not outrageously so. The rocks were more trouble than the hills, although the hills were tough enough that I walked several of them. I finished in 1:48:45, or about thirty minutes longer than I’d expect to take for a ten-mile road race, but I have no reference to tell me if that’s good or bad or mediocre or indifferent. So I just don’t worry about it, grab some animal crackers and sports drink, and chill out, waiting for the awards and raffle. Because for a small race - and if I thought the Big D races were small, this event was miniscule - they gave away a lot of neat stuff. Compasses, lights, compass/lights, Frisbees, fleece jackets, duffel bags - a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t mind winning even if it did mean having to haul it back to Dallas. Which wasn’t an issue because I didn’t win anything which means I’ll probably have to do another one of these races and try, try again.

11/15: Big D 30K

2009-11-23T15:38:00.007-06:00

The Big D races - a 5K and a 30K with a common start and finish - were about to start and I was wondering where the hell all the people were. And how many times I might wander off course if I couldn’t see the person in front of me - there was very little chance of actually getting lost since the course was essentially two laps of White Rock Lake, one counterclockwise and one clockwise, but there were a lot of places where you could take one path or another, and I’d like to take the correct one. Especially if the correct one was the shorter one.

The race was put on by Thruston Racing, who used to be a major player in the Dallas racing scene but have cut back on their schedule in recent years. I’ve run maybe twenty Thruston races over the years but around the time race day registraion for their 5Ks rose to $30, I decided it wasn’t a good value. Which isn’t totally fair on my part - $30 for a no-frills, well-run 5K is overpriced but $50 for a 30K, which is what I paid by registering the day before, is reasonable. For fifty bucks I got an organized event with an accurate course and prompt results, a t-shirt, and postrace refreshments that included soft drinks and beer. In cans, but still. So thirty bucks for a 5K when I most likely have other, less expensive options? I think not. But $50 for a 30K when the number of events longer than a half marathon but shorter than a full is limited, and where what events there are all tend to be priced in the same neighborhood? I can live with that.

I hadn’t run a Thruston race since 2005, and I have never run this one before, but they haven’t changed much although they might have gotten smaller. Or maybe it’s just this one - looking at the results since 2006, this year’s number of finishers (186, 5K and 30K combined) didn’t seem out of line with the previous years’ totals. At any rate, I never had to worry about going off-course - there was always somebody in sight in front of me.

I wound up running my worst race of the fall, partially because I wasn’t trained for the distance and partially because the weather, most notably the humidity, was uncooperative. I planned on running eight-minute miles for as long as I could; I wound up running one eight-minute mile (mile seven, probably because it has some downhill) total. I averaged 8:10s through seven and knew I was basically done. I wound up doing the first 15K in 1:19 and the second in 1:57, with a good amount of walking mixed in after mile eleven. Which doesn’t mean the race was a total waste; I plan on noting the three positives from this experience and then moving on: it’s good to be humbled every once in a while, I did get in about fourteen miles of actual, if not continuous, running, and I spent 3:16 on my feet, which is a good experience for long runs going forward.

Of course, that presumes that I actually do more long runs going forward. I tend to get lazy(-ier) around the holidays.

11/07: Salute America's Heroes 10K

2009-11-10T15:12:00.002-06:00

Two lessons learned: The Colony is a hell of a long way from Euless and the American Heroes 10K isn’t worth the drive.

Before the bitchfest begins, I should probably note the two pleasing aspects of this race: the lady who sang the National Anthem, a woman whose husband is serving in Afghanistan, did a really nice job and the trail we ran on down by Lake Lewisville was pleasant. So it’s not like the morning totally sucked.

On the other hand, my problems with the race began virtually from the moment I stepped out of the car. While no single problem was that calamitous in itself, the sum total indicated a decision-making process with an unerring instinct for erring.

There were no race forms available out in front of the registration table so I took one from the registration table and filled it out while I stood in line. Which I had plenty of time to do, along with writing the check, and figuring my taxes, and computing pi to 10,000 places, because despite being fourth or fifth in line, it took fifteen minutes before I got to the front. At which point it took maybe forty seconds to get registered so I’m not sure what the hold-up was with the other people. Once I did get registered, I didn’t get a bib number because the had run out of 10K bibs which I’m not sure how that happened given that the race only had 78 finishers.

I did get a timing chip, of a variety I had never seen before - it looked more like a timing badge and we were told it had to be pinned to the right hip. Now this is something I don’t get - the original chip system worked well so you would think that a newcomer would have to work equally well and offer some advantage - be disposable, cost less, whatever. Maybe this badge thing is cheaper and just as reliable but based on what the organizers were saying, I’m thinking it’s less effective than the other systems. They told us that if we wanted our start times recorded, we should line up on the right side of the road, near the chip reader. Which isn’t something I haven’t had to worry about with any of the other systems.

The brochure said the 5K and 10K were supposed to start together at 8:05; somewhere along the line that plan changed and the 10K started ten minutes after the 5K. Which isn’t that big a deal, but doesn’t look good when everything else seems screwed up, plus I was actually pressed for time. The real kicker was the mile markers, which made no sense. According to what they had out there, my splits were one mile in 9:38, one mile in 6:42, 1.1 miles in 6:10, .9 miles in 8:54, one mile in 7:15, and 1.2 miles in 9:45. The upshot is I have no idea how far I ran, but I’m guessing the course was a fifth to a quarter of a mile long and if any of the mile markers were placed correctly, credit random chance.

I was bummed to have to take off immediately after the race because it looked like they had beer. On second, though, if their instincts held true, it was probably sans alcohol.

11/01: Marshall University Half Marathon

2009-11-09T14:58:00.003-06:00

I run faster carrying a football - that was my takeaway from the Marshall University Half Marathon, where I made sure to tell them that I still have four years of eligibility left. Cutting across the end zone, I took a short pitch from a dude who really wanted to execute a straight hand-off, turned up field, and dashed - well, as much of a dash as I could muster after thirteen miles - towards the opposing goalline, which was also the finish line of the race. I thought about diving across the finish line with the ball stretched out in front of me but thought better of it - the chip was recorded by my foot hitting the mat, not the ball breaking the plane of the end zone. It would be a bitch not to have my finishing time recorded because I dove over the mat.

The timing chip was one of two things I didn’t love about the race; in fact, the timing chip I actively disliked, although it was partially my fault. The chip was on a Velcro strap and wearing it felt like a mild form of house arrest - I would have preferred the more traditional set-up of a chip attached to the laces with a plastic tie. Of course, the Velcro strap may not have bothered me so much if I hadn’t put it on too loosely originally, and then overdid it when I tightened it just before the start. By the end of the race my ankle was hurting, probably because the strap was cutting off circulation - after the race I saw that it was cutting into the skin.

The course was the other thing I didn’t love but I certainly liked it okay, mostly because it was flat and fast. I think it’s the second-fastest half marathon I’ve ever run, behind the old Las Vegas course - which they don’t use any more, and I’ve never run the new one there. On the down side there are a few stretches, totally probably somewhere between a third and a half of the race, that aren’t too scenic; it’s not a half course that I’d want to be strolling through. I think that’s at least partially a function of Huntington - you have a choice between fast and scenic; if you want some lovely views, you’re going to have to climb for them.

The weather- lower forties, a light breeze - was also conducive to running and I ran my fastest half in ten years, despite maybe also running my dumbest race in ten years. I covered the first three miles at 7:23 pace, the next eight at 7:40 pace, and averaged 8:17 from there through the finish. Despite speeding up at the end because I do, remember, run faster carrying a football. Actually, looking at those splits, they’re not that bad - I’ve run much dumber races many times over the past ten years. At any rate, it didn’t matter - the important thing was that I made it to the stadium while they were still grilling hamburgers. They were already out of cheese, though.

10/24: D.O. Dash 5K

2009-10-27T07:17:00.003-05:00

“I don’t think this girl should be starting this close to the front of the pack - yep, I’m passing her and we’re barely to the timing mat. I hope that kid doesn’t cut me off going around the corner. Screw it, I’ll just cut to the outside and HILL! Why do they always look so much steeper when you’re actually running them? Oh well, try to maintain effort, at least - maybe I should pace off these two girls? Nah, I’d look like Stalker Dude, besides they’re going to slow unless I’m going too fast too early. Okay, turn the corner and no more HILL, this is more manageable. Should I pace off THESE two girls? Guess not. Another corner, another hill. This one isn’t too steep but God, it looks like it goes on forever. I feel like I’m passing too many people but a lot of these guys sped past me in the first quarter-mile; I think they’re toast already. Suckers. Been there, done that, and I’ll probably do it again. I just hope I‘m not doing it right now.. I think I can catch that girl up there, maybe I should pace off her for the rest of this mile. Pace, pace, pass. Then again, maybe not. God, I hope I’m not using up three miles’ worth of energy before the first water stop. Which is right here - I think it’s also the mile marker. 7:24 - I guess that’s okay, what with all the uphill.

“I bet we get some downhill once we turn that corner. Oh yeah - this is living. I wonder if I’ve ever run through here before? I think maybe that Arlington Heights 5K I did a few years back, and probably when I ran the first leg of the Cowtown relay. I wonder what that golf course is. Oh, back to uphill. I think we’ll be going back down once we turn that corner. Yep, called that one. Don’t even think about walking, not yet - I felt worse than this running eight on Monday. I can slow down if I start hurting bad. Water stop already? 6:47 - maybe they set it up in the wrong spot.

“Okay, look at that guy up ahead. Pace off him. Pace, pace - if I’m pacing off him, should he be getting closer? Okay, this dude in the SUV is waiting for you to pass before he pulls out of his driveway. Do him a favor and pick it up some - good God that hurt - and he’s still sitting there. I guess the guy behind me is still pretty close. Or maybe SUV Guy is just spectating in which case he needs to get a life, or cable. I have no idea where I am right now. Damn, I think we come out on 7th downhill from where we started. This is Arch Adams? That’ll take me to 7th and - yep, uphill finish, pretty much. What a bitch. I wonder if I can catch that kid in front of me. My advantage is that my hair is more aerodynamic than his ‘fro. His advantages are that he’s accelerating and I’m decelerating. Probably not going to happen. Damn kid. Damn hill. Okay, turn the corner, back on level ground, push through the finish. 22:25 - best time this year, I think. Nope, forgot about Kentucky. I wonder who’s ass a guy has to kiss to get some Gatorade around here.”

10/03: Bird on the Run Trail Race

2009-10-26T09:43:00.003-05:00

It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, it wasn’t night yet - it was a little past three in the afternoon - and it wasn’t that dark, just kind of gray and sporadically drizzling. Suddenly, a shot - or airhorn, more accurately - rang out. Once it did, and this I can say without qualification, we were off running in the inaugural Bird On The Run Approximately But Unfortunately On The Heavy Side Of Four-Mile Trail Race, starting from Bob Jones Park in Southlake and finishing in the Bob Jones Nature Center, which is on Bob Jones Road. I have no idea who Bob Jones is but if I lived in Southlake, I suppose I might. I don’t think it’s the same guy with the university in Greenville, South Carolina.

Not to spoil the suspense or beat my own drum or anything, but I took third in my age group, not that I can say with any certainty that there was a fourth in my age group. Which earned me a clear lucite Christmas ornament, with the race logo and date etched on it. Which was nice, and different. The ornament came in a small bubblewrap sleeve. Which was awesome. I mean, really awesome. I could stay while the rest of the awards were being handed out because hey, I had bubbles to pop. Every time I sat down to write this report, I’d pick up the award and pop some bubbles instead. Now I have no more bubbles to pop, so I guess I’ll finally write a report. Too bad I don’t actually remember anything about the race, except that it rained some but mostly before and after the race - my bubblewrap got wet - but not so much during. Or maybe I was running too hard to notice but that seems unlikely.

I do remember that we finished at the top of a hill. A kind of nasty hill, actually. A nasty hill that we could easily have avoided if the course designer had made it closer to a 5K race. I mentioned that to him and he said, “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Fun for who?”

“Me. I liked watching you idiots struggle up that hill.” Oh well, they say it builds character or something.

Starting and finishing at different locations was kind of a pain in the ass but they had parking at both locations and shuttle buses available. I parked at the start and walked back after the race; it was maybe a half-mile on the trail we had just raced over, and it was drizzling again. Which these days isn’t much of a rarity around here. An added bonus to this race was I learned a new access point to some of the Army Corps of Engineer trails on the south side of Lake Grapevine, since the city of Grapevine has started charging admission to the trails on the north side. Which I don’t mind paying five bucks unless I pay my five bucks and find the parking lot is full and the trails are crowded, which was frequently the case when I’ve run there in the past.

10/03: The Loop 15K

2009-10-05T13:36:00.005-05:00

Run for enough years and you'll probably become a weather connoisseur, especially if you race on a regular (i.e., every weekend, at least during the spring and fall) basis. So when a dude whose running career stretches back to when my only running was from the law because of youthful shenanigans told me today was a perfect day for running, I could count on him to know what he was talking about. Because here's the thing - when the announcer dude's wearing shorts and a t-shirt and saying it's a great day to run, he's probably tragically mistaken. It's probably a great day to spectate and the runners are most likely screwed.

The DRC took a step back in terms of crowd control; we were all over the trail a good ten to fifteen minutes before the race began. I feel kind of bad about it now but to be honest, I didn’t even think about it until a day and a half after the race. When we finally did start, we ran north on East Lawther Drive and crossed on Mockingbird over to West Lawther where we ran down the trail. I think we run mostly on the road on the east side partially because it’s flatter and partially because the road has enough sections closed to cars that it’s not like it’s a through street anyway. West Lawther has no closed sections and the trail is probably flatter than the road, and we’re pretty well spread out by that point, so running on the trail is probably better for everyone.

A concrete wall between the spillway and Garland road collapsed in the Great Flood of 2007, so they currently have an extended area around there closed off while they do repairs and enhancements. Because of this, I think, they sent us down the newer trail they built a few years ago rather than sending us up the ramp by the Pump House and across the dam, the way they used to. The construction also altered the tough hill on Garland Road; the sidewalk is closed so we ran in the street there and it seemed easier. It didn’t seem to rise as steeply at the top. I’d like to think that when they redo the sidewalk there, they’ll be able to have it more closely match the rise along the street but I’m not holding my breath.

After that last hill I’m usually gassed and reduced to walking at some point between there and the finish, which from the top of the hill I still have maybe a mile and a half to go. I did feel gassed but I never walked, probably due to the favorable weather, and didn’t even slow down very much. I finished in 1:11:11, a 15K PR by 1:34, which was surprising on the one hand but maybe shouldn’t have been on the other. My longer distance PRs, except for the half, are soft, mostly because when I was almost fast, I’d always jump in the 5K any time the weather was conducive to running fast. This is probably the best weather I’ve ever had for running a 15K.

09/27: State to State Half Marathon

2009-10-04T11:22:00.006-05:00

I really need to stop trusting these motel clock-radios; I woke up at 6:40, 40 minutes away from the parking lot for the State to State Half Marathon, said parking lot being itself maybe a ten-minute walk to the staging area / starting line. I had to forgo my traditional prerace shower but I made it to the race with time to spare for picking up my timing chip. Barely.

The race starts in the middle of Oxford, Ohio, (home of the Miami University RedHawks) and runs into Indiana, although not really to, or even through, any specific town so far as I could tell, then returns to Ohio and Oxford. A banner was stretched across the state line; it said "Welcome To Indiana" and "Welcome To Ohio" on the appropriate sides but I don't actually remember seeing any permanent welcome signs in either direction. Which doesn't mean they weren't there; coming back, at least, they could have had an elephant on the side of the road and I might not have seen it.

The course is fairly simple - we followed High Street west out of town because Indiana is west of Ohio and although the name of the road changed, we pretty much stayed on it the entire time, except for two detours into subdivisions on the west side of Oxford while we were running towards Indiana. The course could be accurately described as rolling; going out I thought we were running mostly gentle uphills for a few miles. When I looked for a corresponding stretch of gentle downhills on the way back in, though, I was tragically disappointed because I really could have used them. Especially since I had already burned through my I-just-want-to-be-done sprint - at mile eight, which is a little early for a half marathon.

Storms came through overnight and we started under dark gray skies that, for whatever reason, turned noticeably darker once we crossed into Indiana, I mean, immediately, like the moment I passed under the banner. It reminded me of "The Stand," the way the weather turned sour on one of the good guys when he entered the Walkin Dude's domain. Not that I'm suggesting Indiana is under Randall Flagg's sway. I'm just saying - the sky was darker and more threatening there. Draw your own conclusions.

Eventually I got back to Ohio, Oxford, and the staging area, in that order. Chugging down High Street, I got passed by some guy who was finishing with too much energy. The announcer got excited and said, "We've got a real race to the finish here," but in fact we didn't - he blew my doors off. Which is fine since I've been meaning to have those doors replaced for years anyway. After finishing I checked out the postrace chow and was pleasantly surprised - not only was it well-stocked with traditional foodstuffs (bagels, bananas, granola bars) but it was also resplendent with one-offs - Tootsie Rolls and donuts. People were scarfing up snacks like they were provisioning for a trip to the North Pole - a carton of granola bars here, fistfuls of Tootsie Rolls there - but my mom raised me to be not quite so greedy; I just grabbed two donuts, three Tootsie Rolls, and a bottle of Gatorade. Then I took off to bankrupt a breakfast buffet.

09/19: Oktoberfest 5K

2009-09-29T13:33:00.004-05:00

Turning north on Addison Circle Drive or whatever (okay, Addison Road, it looks like) from Arapaho Road, I must have looked like hell. I felt pretty good considering I had spent the last ten minutes or so running east into the sun on unshaded, baked concrete, but I was running Addison's Oktoberfest 5K and I knew going in what to expect - a mundane course, free postrace beer, and free admission to Oktoberfest (a five-dollar value!) that evening. Which, given that a cadre of friends were running the 5K as well as returning to Oktoberfest at night, was an acceptable trade-off. As I made the turn north, some kid - maybe fourteen years old - said to me, "Almost there, sir; you can make it!" In a very concerned voice. Good to know, although personally I had no doubts that I could make it. I was more than willing for the race to be over by that point but it wasn't yet a necessity. I said, "Or, I could hand my chip to you and you could finish for both of us." He laughed and introduced himself so I ran maybe a half-dozen steps while shaking hand with the unknown teenager. He should be the known teenager given that he introduced himself but to be honest, I wasn't paying attention.

I left my Garmin in an Albuquerque hotel room back in whatever month I ran the Albuquerque Zoo 10K and this is the first time since then that I genuinely missed not having it. The mile markers were at least modestly inaccurate; I thought I ran the first mile faster than 7:39, but then again, I'm still surprised every June when the Yankees pass on me in the MLB draft. I usually project myself to go in the first five rounds; since I've never been drafted in any round in any sport (professionally) ever, I'm guessing there must be some confusion over my college eligibility. But the point - remember the point? - is that while I have my doubts about that 7:39, it's at least within the realm of possibility. The 6:30 second mile and the 8:27 third mile, not so much although that discrepancy could be the result of just one misplaced marker. If the second mile had been 7:20 and the third 7:37, I'd be a little bummed but also a lot less skeptical. Make one glaring screw-up, though, and you cast doubt even on the stuff you may have done correctly.

Eventually the race - whatever distance it may have actually been - ended and eventually we got to the beer tent and eventually we got a beer. And a pretzel. Which is another upside to this event - if you want that traditional runner's grub, they've got it but they also have big, soft pretzels. And a guy dancing on a stage with a bunch of little kids to some weird polka/rap hybrid but we were far enough away to be mostly out of range of that spectacle. If it even existed - it could have been just the beer talking.

09/12: Suncrest Mountain Half Marathon

2009-09-14T10:35:00.004-05:00

Late in the Suncrest Mountain Half Marathon, or whatever this chamber of horrors officially calls itself, I was running on pavement beside a woman I had been running near for maybe five miles when we turned a corner and saw yet another daunting climb in front of us. "I swear, if I see one more more freaking hill in this freaking race, I'm gonna freak," she said in a voice that suggested she might be overestimating her tolerance by one hill. Actually, although we still had a hill or two in front of us - not counting the one in front of us - she didn't freak. She picked up the pace, instead, leaving me and several others eating her dust.

Earlier I was afraid I was leading this same woman astray. I passed her, along with a few other people, on a wide trail section, just before we hit a questionable junction with one definite trail and one possible alternative. Being in the lead, except for the many people in front of us but out of sight, I got to make the decision so I went with the more obvious trail and people behind me followed, which I wasn't sure if they were following me or if they made their own decisions. At any rate, I ran for about fifteen minutes or so without a sign that I was actually on course; I was very concerned, and probably would have said something to the woman behind me if she hadn't been wearing headphones, when I finally came to a T intersection with orange arrows pointing to the left. Either we never left the course or the marshals anticipated this particular bit of foolishness and left helpful hints to guide errant runners back on track. In either case, I avoided the embarrassment of getting my ass kicked by a feisty Utahan wench moments before we were both devoured by bears.

Talking to a couple of guys after the race, they said they were surprised by how tough the course was. I looked at the profile beforehand so I had a good idea what to expect in general, but I was surprised by how much uphill there was in the predominantly downhill first half of the race, and the downhill in the mostly uphill second half. The course was a mixture of trail and pavement, with the first trail section - a foliage-lined single-track - coming a little less than a mile into the race. Since we hadn't sorted ourselves out by pace yet and still had a random mix of half-marathoners and 5k people to deal with, this wasn't optimal but I don't know the area so I don't know what other options they had. If they could reroute the course so we run the more open trail sections early, that would probably help - I might have run 2:17 rather than 2:18.

After the race they immediately printed up individual results on what are basically business cards, so I know I was officially the 26th finisher in the men's half marathon and 7th in my (40 - 49) age group, with a time of 2:18:38 (10:34 pace). I actually received two cards - the first one had my name as Michael X and the card dude insisted on correcting it. Still, I'm counting this as my first race run as a member of the Nation of Islam.

09/07: FWRC Labor Day 15K

2009-09-14T10:32:00.003-05:00

I got to the Ft. Worth Running Club's Labor Day 15K a little before seven in the morning, which worked out well given that the race started at 7:30 - a half hour earlier than I was expecting. I should have known something was up when parking was already backed up, although that was partially due to the Bedfordites stopping in the middle of the road to - well, I don't know what exactly, but I'm sure they had a reason. I'm equally sure that as soon as they tried to articulate that reason, they'd realize they were pretty much just babbling.

The FWRC Labor Day races (they have a 5K and a 1K in addition to the 15K) are a tradition but this year they were a tradition on the move, from the old Luke's location on University to the new Luke's location on 7th. Since the majority of the race is run on the Trinity Trails this is isn't as much of a departure as it might seem, the main differences being how you get on the trail, how far up the trail you run, and how you exit the trail to return to the staging area. And in one regard, the differences translate to a major win - by running further up the trail (towards Oklahoma, although when it veers northwest it's more like towards the Panhandles), you get to run a decent section of the trail that's actually shaded, which I never knew such a thing existed before.

Luke's new location is in the old Montgomery Ward building that's now home to a plethora of the chains that made America famous, as well as lofts, condo and other fine retailers of the local persuasion. Starbucks has a store there and the race's goody bag - which was really more of a goody coupon book - had a Starbuck's coupon for 10% off (race day only, Montgomery Plaza location only). The associate race director who processed my entry pointed out the coupon and said, "they'll be there, open, at 4:00am"; in my best (i.e., not very good) Claude Rains voice, I said, "I'll be there at seven." She just looked at me weird. I guess she's not much of a "Casablanca" fan.

Nothing against this race, but all I proved by running it is that I do have an addiction. I'm not really trained for the distance or thrilled by the course, and I'm still dragging from last weekend. The weather isn't conducive to fast times. The main reason I ran this race is because I had the desire to run some race today - assuming I woke up in time, of course - and I liked the idea of doing a 15K because it presented an opportunity to get in a half-assed long run. There was also a 15K out at White Rock, but this one cost less and had better amenities, i.e., hot dogs and beer. Besides, I run at White Rock way more often - see, for instance, Saturday - than I do on the Trinity Trails.

09/05: Breakfast Bash Five-Mile

2009-09-07T12:04:00.004-05:00

I got to White Rock Lake at about 6:45 for the Breakfast Bash Five-Mile; parking at White Rock in general and Winfrey Point in particular has become a controversial topic in recent months and I wanted to make sure my super secret parking spot, personally endorsed by Dick Cheney, wasn’t taken. Which it wasn’t, although two of the three were and the less-than-competent parking job done by the early arrivals forced me nearer to a handicapped sign than I’d like to be. But I wasn’t actually in the handicapped spot and I didn’t get ticketed or prevent anyone from using the handicapped space so I guess it’s okay. It gave me something to obsess about while running at any rate.

The parking controversy concerns parking, or more accurately not parking, on the grass in the park. In general I support the ban; it seemed like Winfrey Point hosted at least one race every weekend last fall and all that driving and parking on the grass can’t be beneficial. Most of these races were charging $20 to $30 per runner; I don’t know the economics of road races but it seems to me that if you’re charging that much and drawing enough to exceed the parking limitations, you can afford to take your race out on the streets. I would like to see an exception made for the Dallas Running Club, though; they charge a nominal fee (free for members, $10 for non-members) and they only have one race a month, not all of which are at Winfrey Point.

The DRC is also getting better at certain things that always bothered me - most notably, they prevented people from lining up on the trail until just before they were ready to start the race. White Rock Lake gets a lot of use on weekend mornings, from bikers and bladers as well as hordes of runners, and it was always obnoxious to be clogging the trail for fifteen or twenty minutes waiting for the race to start. They left a little room for improvement - they staged us for the start, then they had a moment of silence, then they played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then they started us on our way. We weren’t standing around on the trail that long but it seems to me we could have heard the moment of silence and the national anthem just as well from alongside the trail. They had a reasonably good sound system. That played “Fadeaway” by the Bo Deans while waiting for the race to start - now there’s a song I don’t hear every day. Or every year, for that matter.

We started to the north. It was a typical Winfrey Point race which means there’s not all that much to say about it - we ran out about 2.5 miles, then we turned around and ran back. Then we went back up the hill to the Mansion at Winfrey Point and ate breakfast burritos of various kinds: egg and potato, egg and bacon, egg and sausage. I had one of the bacon variety and one of sausage; the sausage was better. But given that I’m a DRC member it was all free - and no parking tickets! - so it’s all good.

08/22: Just Cause 5K

2009-08-24T07:49:00.004-05:00

I was driving along New Circle Road in Lexington, Kentucky, after running in the Just Cause 5K. I was on an endorphin high, I guess; at any rate I was too relaxed to be driving. I looked to the left and saw a sign with blue neon tubes, looked back to the road, and did a double take. Was that a Zaxby’s? I think that was a Zaxby’s! I looked back and it was! it was! a Zaxby’s! I continued looking for another couple of beats, then looked back at the road and CONSTRUCTION AREA! STOPPED TRAFFIC! PICK-UP TRUCK BRAKE LIGHTS! Rental car - declined insurance - no wrecks allowed! Squealing tires (me - love those anti-lock brakes)! Swerving red Subaru Impreza (me again)! As Maxwell Smart would say, missed it by THAT much - both the collision and the heart attack. I’m probably the only person who needs a designated driver for running.

I think I was in a Zaxby’s once; I don’t remember being too impressed. I like the sign, though I don’t know that I like it enough to justify totaling a rental car.

The Just Cause 5K was put on by the Harmony Christian Church in Georgetown, Kentucky. They referred to it as the first annual which earlier in the week, concerning some other event, I heard was incorrect usage. Either it’s the first (or inaugural) whatever or it’s the (more than one)th annual whatever but you shouldn’t refer to the first instance as an annual event. Then again, I read this on the internet and another rule of thumb is never believe anything you read on the internet. This last bastion of accuracy excepted, of course.

The race started at 8:00 in the evening which meant a lot of walkers were finishing after it got dark, which caught the organizers by surprise - “who knew?” said the announcer dude and I was thinking probably those Farmer’s Almanac people, for one. It’s not like sunsets are random occurrences. But it’s their first annual so I suppose I should cut them some slack. He said they’ll start a half hour earlier next year; I’d recommend they move the start up a full hour, to 7:00.

The course was also problematic, although they did a reasonable job given their geographic limitations. They had major roads to the north and west, so limited opportunity in those directions, nothing they can use to the south, and a small, isolated subdivision to the east. So we started in the church parking lot and ran west, down a hill and around the parking lot of a small shopping center, then back up the hill and around the back of the church, going cross-country as we came around the other side and returned to the parking lot in front of the church. We ran through the parking lot to the minor road in front of the church, where we turned east and ran down into and around the isolated subdivision. We came back up on the road in front of the church and turned back into the parking lot; we continued our circuit in a counter-clockwise direction and finished up back at the starting line. I didn’t like the course - it was too haphazard and not very interesting - but I don’t really see what else they could do. I wouldn’t recommend adding a 10K next year, though.

08/15: Life Without Limits 5K

2009-08-17T07:38:00.004-05:00

I ran this race, I don’t even know what it’s called - Larger than Life 5K, Lust for Life 5K, something like that. Okay - it’s the Life Without Limits 5K (so that's where the Elvis Run went!); I may not have the name of the race sitting on the tip of my tongue but I do know where to look it up. It’s a pretty large race which makes its anonymity strange (until you find out it used to be the Elvis Run), but then again it is the middle of summer and we are in Texas; it’s not like it’s strangled by competition. It is essentially the Katy Trail 5K only in August instead of May, on Saturday instead of Thursday, in the morning instead of the evening, and with much less postrace food. In other words, they basically just have the course in common.

Which isn’t all that surprising as it’s becoming one of the most popular courses in Dallas. It’s the third race I think I’ve run on it and the Butterfly Boogie, which I’ve registered for two or three times but never actually run, also uses it. What with the city of Dallas discouraging use of Winfrey Point for running events, I could see it getting even more use.

I lined up early, right about the time they started pumping the live band, whoever the hell they were, through the speakers near the start, which didn’t initially please me since I had already turned on my mp3 player. Then I realized they were covering “Is Anybody Going To San Antone” by Doug Sahm, and doing a credible job, so I conceded their tunes were at least momentarily better than mine and turned off my player. They played another song after that and then deejayed music returned; the only song I remember hearing before the race started was “I Ran” by A Flock of Haircuts. I mean, Seagulls.

The race started and I turned my tunes back on. Early on, like before we hit Turtle Creek Boulevard proper, I heard Liz Phair start singing “South Dakota” which reminded me of racing in South Dakota a couple of months ago; my Pavlovian response in this race was to run faster than prudence dictated. The first mile is pretty flat anyway, and possibly a slight net downhill; my first split was 7:12 which was good in that I didn’t feel like I was pushing that hard but bad because it’s still August in Dallas and I’m just getting over a cold. There’s probably going to be a bill to be paid.

The second mile has most of the uphill, mostly running up Blackburn to Cole and then again on the anonymous side street up to the Katy Trail. I ran it in 7:49, which I was also pleasantly surprised by, even though I knew it was going to be a struggle to hold that pace to the finish. A struggle I lost - about three-quarters through the third mile a coughing spell hit that slowed me to a walk. My split for that mile was 8:57 and I ran the last tenth in 44 seconds; my total time was 24:43. Which I think is faster than I ran the Katy Trail 5K back in May, so I have that going for me. Which is nice.

07/25: New Milford Eight-Mile Road Race

2009-07-26T13:45:00.005-05:00

I screwed up the goddamn alarm again. (Digression: Bruce Springsteen used to say that his dad was always bitching about his goddamn guitar, his goddamn stereo, his goddamn records. He said that his dad apparently thought everything in his room came from the same company.) The sad thing is, it made no difference - I am now a person capable of waking up his ownself at 6:13 in the morning. I think they call those people adults.

The silver lining in this cloud of burgeoning maturity was that I did not oversleep the New Milford Eight-Mile Road Race, which the organizers claim is the third-oldest, or maybe it was the third longest-running, race in Connecticut. I'm guessing the Manchester Thanksgiving day race (good guess!) and the Tarzan Brown Road Race (bad guess!) are older. Since this race is 42 years old, so am I. Older, that is. Not 42.

New Milford is in far west Connecticut, maybe seven miles from New York, and maybe twenty miles north of Danbury and while I don't know much about the topography of Connecticut, I know enough to expect hills in this neighborhood. In that, I was correct. I also know that the southern border of the state is at sea level - "an almost entirely notional concept," according to Bill Bryson - but that's hardly relevant. Talking to some dudes before the race, they said the hills start halfway through the second mile with a killer, then give way to rolling hills until about halfway through mile seven, when we'd have to run up the meanest, ugliest, toughest, cussingest hill in the western hemisphere or turn around and go back the way we came. In which case we wouldn't be included in the results. The last mile was all downhill, maybe a little too downhill, to the finish. One guy said he ran the course earlier in the week and that's why he opted for to run the 5K. I found their course description more accurate the further into the race we got - they neglected to mention how much downhill there was in the first mile and a half and when the uphill did start, it was with a little half-mile roller coaster. The tough hill was basically mile three and it was disturbingly reminiscent of the tough early hill at Pictured Rocks, except I didn't feel totally spent at the top and I ran that mile in 8:33, so I guess it wasn't that bad. Or I was unusually pathetic in Michigan, either way. After that we got back on the roller coaster, at least until mile six.

Mile six started out nondescript, then we started going uphill just past the 10K marker, which incidentally I don't recall seeing a 5K marker. I thought if this is the Mongo hill they were talking about, they set a world record for exaggeration - a bit of hubris that caught up to me and bit me in the ass when, at about 6.5 miles, we turned a corner and shifted from running to mountain-climbing. I took one look at Little K2 and folded my hand. It was a nice day for a stroll by then, after all. I still had enough energy to run downhill the last mile, into the final results.

Immediately after the race, I sprinted - using the term loosely - back to my car. I was parked in a three-hour zone and what with climbing the Connecticut Himalayas, I was worried I wouldn't get back in time. No sweat - I made it with seconds to spare.

07/04: Four on the Fourth

2009-07-05T12:36:00.006-05:00

I pulled into the parking lot of Ada Hayden Park a little before seven in the morning on a rainy Independence Day, listening to "Achtung Baby" and thinking about failed relationships and fractured hearts. I was in Ames, Iowa, for the Four on the Fourth race and I was mired in melancholy, probably brought on by dreary skies, too little sleep, and geriatric drivers, all of whom looked like the American Gothic dude. They were European geriatrics, apparently - they seemed to think the speed limit signs were in kilometers.

When "Love Is Blindness" ended I got out of the car and went to register. which I guess meant I was actually going to do run this race. I had had my doubts; I'm not a huge fan of running in the rain but this wasn't much of a rain. It was more like a light drizzle or heavy mist and the temperature - low to mid-sixties - was better than anything I'd seen in Dallas in a couple of months. I blew off running the previous afternoon because of rain even though I found an awesome place to run (the Iowa St. cross-country course) so I needed to do this race if for no other reason than to get some miles in.

After registering I went back to my rented Suzuki SX4, which is a dumpy crossover and not the elite racing machine its name might suggest, to listen to some more tunes and check out the schwag. Which wasn't much - a t-shirt and the bag it came in - but was of above-average quality. The bag was a green, reusable cloth bag and the shirt was Gildan Ultra Cotton, which means 50% cotton, 50% polyester. It has a good feel and it's pinkish, but a deep, dark pink, not, um, emasculating. I also changed the shirt I was currently wearing, from a sleeveless black to a short-sleeve gray, to better match the weather. I was wearing gray shorts and I don't like my shirt and shorts to be similar colors - I'm not into that whole monochromatic thing - but I value comfort over aesthetics. I think I've proved that on multiple occasions in my life.

I ejected the U2 CD and popped in "The Neon Bible." I listened to seven songs: "Keep The Car Running," "The Neon Bible," "Intervention," "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations," "Antichrist Television Blues," "No Cars Go," and "Keep The Car Running" again. With the exception of the title track these are all propulsive tunes - they make me want to move and my preferred form of movement is running. I sat in the car with the rain falling gently on the windshield, watching more people show up for the race, listening to Arcade Fire (and U2) and getting excited about running. Not racing, necessarily, but running and trying to run fast. It was an unorthodox warm-up but it was effective - it got me to the starting line feeling good and ready to go. They started us off and I went. The rain had nearly stopped.

06/28: Pictured Rocks Road Race

2009-06-30T13:05:00.004-05:00

I thought I was registering for a trail 15K and somehow wound up in a mostly road half marathon - the Pictured Rocks Road Race, in and around Munising, Michigan. I suppose my attention to detail could use a little attention itself but sometimes these little glitches are fate's way of getting us in the right place at the right time. Though mostly, like in this instance, they're just random screw-ups.

The organizers oversell the toughness of this course, which features two major hills and a bunch of reasonable ones, but not by much. Bad Idea Hill, so called because the longer you spend running up it the more time you have to consider other, more profitable, ways you could be spending your time, starts maybe a half-mile into the race and finally crests maybe a quarter-mile past the first mile marker, although it teases you with intermittent plateaus along the way. It reminded me of the little brother of the killer 29th Street hill in Wheeling's Ogden Newspapers 20K, only with more shade. The second hill, on a trail late in the race, is like running up a sand dune. A twisty-turny sand dune, with foliage.

The organizers also seem very intent on ferreting out potential cheaters, perhaps because of issues in the past. Two or three times I passed curmudgeonly people checking bib numbers as runners went by. We wore chips - really uncomfortable ankle-bracelet chips like we were all under arrest or in the Witless Protection Program, perhaps because the race started next to the Alger County Jail - so I'd think they could just put down additional timing mats at those locations. The chips were also unavailable the night before the race so everybody had to pick them up in the morning, which caused the start to be delayed ten or fifteen minutes. I wasn't a big fan of the chip in this race partially because it wasn't large enough to make it a necessity and partially because with no starting mat, from a runner's perspective I don't see the point. For me the chip's main advantage is to accurately track me from start to finish, not from where I happen to be standing when the race starts to the finish.

I least I think I'm probably in the clear of any accusations of cheating in this race, which I 'ran' in 2:14:10. I was okay through seven miles - about 8:45 pace - but I was also toast, with one major sand dune left to climb. It was a long, slow crawl to the finish.

I ran with an mp3 player, which is probably the first time I've done that in a race this year. While it definitely helped distract me from how horridly I was running, it also may have slowed me down on the trails where strolling along while tuning out was kind of nice. The tunage got off to a weird start; a priest said a prayer and then they started the race and I started my player. Which started up where it ended off the last time I used it, at the end of a Belle and Sebastian song: "But if you are feeling sinister / Go off and see a minister / Chances are you'll probably feel better / If you stayed and played with yourself."

06/13: Dadfest 5K

2009-06-13T15:01:00.003-05:00

WARNING: This report contains descriptions of intrusive medical indignities, a by-product of the aging process, of a moderately intimate and mildly disturbing nature. In other words, perhaps too much information. But if you can’t blog about your first prostate exam, then why the hell did Al Gore even invent the internet?

Having finished all my usual prerace ablutions - stretching, jogging, retching - and still having almost a half hour before showtime, I decided to check out the free prostate screenings since I am approaching the age (or past it, depending on whose literature you read) where these things need to be monitored on a regular basis. I thought there wouldn’t be much of a crowd before the race and I also thought they would only be doing the minimally invasive PSA test.

I was half right. It wasn’t the half I would have preferred to have gotten correct. The volunteers were unsure how long the process would take but the heat index outdoors was already in the quadruple digits. I wouldn’t be crushed if I missed the race.

So, about fifteen minutes before the start of a 5K I was in a hotel meeting room, stuck behind a flimsy privacy curtain with my shorts somewhere between my knees and my ankles, bent at the waist and clutching a metal folding chair for physical and moral support while some dude’s finger was poking around up my butt. If there is a too-much-information section to this account, I’d like to think we’ve safely navigated past it now. The attending medical attendant did try to put me at ease - bought me dinner, a couple of drinks. The seductive vocal stylings of the Rotund Romeo played over the muzak system. While not one I’m anxious to repeat, it wasn’t that horrific an experience - on a par with, although in no way similar to, eating beets.

After he was done with the exam and his ensuing purification rituals, he checked normal on the form and said, “There’s nothing we need to be worried about right now.” What comforting phraseology! I hope when it is time to start being concerned he remembers to let me know because I’d hate to miss out on some good worry time.

The race hadn’t started yet. Properly traumatized, I made my way to the staging area and got in a few more stretches before they sent us off. I know it’s partially a hangover from last week, but I really didn’t like this course which mostly meandered through a major mixed-use development and some adjacent not-yet-developed streets. We didn’t run on the Central Expressway access road but we came close - twice. I’m pretty sure the running surface was 100% concrete although at times it seemed more like 200%. They can’t all be winners, I guess. I ran the first half of the race at a mediocre pace and that turned out to be the highlight; there were frequent short walking breaks over the second half. After thirteen miles last week I ran the last tenth in under 43 seconds; after three miles this week I ran the last tenth in 48 flat. We’re about a week away from the start of summer and I’m already counting the days until October.

06/07: Deadwood Mickelson Trail Half Mararthon

2009-06-09T10:33:00.004-05:00

People let me tell you about my (new) best friend - George S. Mickelson, former governor of South Dakota who helped turn an old railroad right-of-way into an awesome trail that runs for over one hundred miles between Edgemont and Deadwood. The stretch between Rochford and Deadwood is home to the aptly-named Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon which has been around since 2002 even if it did take me until 2009 to run it. And even then, I just did the half.

Advance weather forecasts were not promising and the closer race day drew, the worse they got. The night before the race, it looked like we might be running not only in rain, but in temperatures in the mid-to-upper thirties. Which would be unpleasant. The forecast on race day had improved, though, and we actually had no rain and temperatures in the lower forties. Which sucks for spectators and volunteers, and I commiserate with them greatly, but which is fine for running as far as I'm concerned. The unexpectedly not-bad weather put a positive spin on the adventure.

The marathon and half-marathon are both point-to-point which was great in that it went from an uphill point to a downhill point but less than great in that it meant being bussed to the start. Which meant all the race logistics were pushed earlier in the morning - there was no showing up at 7:45, jump out of the car and start running. More like, get to the rodeo grounds at around 6:00, get to the trailhead a little before 7:00, and stand around anxiously waiting to run. That's just the way it is; you go with it and hope the run's worth the hassle.

It was. It was awesome. Sometimes when I'm slogging through a mediocre, uninspiring run on a brutal Texas summer day and I start to wonder what the hell I'm putting myself through this crap for, well, by mile five of this race I knew. When the opportunity for running to be fun presents itself, I want to be able to grab it. When everything clicks, when I'm running seemingly effortlessly hard and not fighting the elements, and I'm surrounded by some of nature's greatest hits, there's not a better feeling in the world. I feel like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle falling into its proper place. I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Then I have to go uphill for a bit and the feeling fades, but not too much.

The trail is lovely (dark and deep) but I couldn't tell you much about it. The entire way I drank it in but it's not like I was taking mental photographs; I was too busy being happy. And running. And, eventually, feeling tired. We started crossing the occasional street as we got closer to Deadwood and as I crossed the finish line, I felt like I was overdosing on euphoria; I felt less like I had accomplished something and more like I had experienced a gift, sublime and rare. I was crying sans tears because I probably didn't have any spare moisture left in my body and searching for my breath which seemed to have finished a minute or two ahead of me. I walked around for a few moments as the ecstasy stabilized, and a chill set in, along with an insatiable greed to have those feelings back again.

Which is a good greed to have. I hope it's a greed that motivates me to train hard through the summer. I want to run.

05/30: Race For Awareness 5K

2009-06-01T15:30:00.004-05:00

I Raced for Awareness in Denton except I didn’t, really; I raced for five kilometers along a cross-country course through North Lake Park because it was the most appealing race in north Texas this weekend, at least so far as I was concerned. So far this year I’ve run for scholarships, kids, the Albuquerque Zoo, access-to-justice programs, the Katy Trail and God knows what else but the only race I decided to run based on the beneficiary was the Katy Trail 5K. When choosing a race, location, distance, starting times, and friends are more immediate considerations than the charity or cause that the race benefits. Usually the cause is just a tie-breaker when I can’t decide between a couple of races.

I figure someday I’m going to look at the calendar and see that the only race scheduled for a particular day is the White Power 5K or something like that. I won’t run it, of course. 5Ks are too common; if they want to lure me into their race, they’re at least going to have to make it a less-common distance, like four or five miles. Or a 9K – 9Ks are cool. Even then, I’m going to really pig out on the postrace food to try and make sure that they lose money on me.

The Race for Awareness supports Alley’s House which, according to their website, offers a number of programs to assist teen mothers as well as a number of facts about teen pregnancies. Some of the statistics I saw on the website didn’t seem consistent (55,000 teen births each year in Texas but 80,000 new teen mothers – I guess some of these new teen mothers could be moving in from out of state although 25,000 seems like a lot) but these could be stats from different year, maybe. Anyway, Alley’s House seems like a worthwhile cause and I’m happy to throw a few bucks their way. Unless, of course, they’re really just a front for white supremacists. Then I wish the race had been a 9K. And in March or November or sometime when it’s not, like, 70 degrees at 8:30 in the morning.

I almost like cross-country. I would like cross-country except that the courses wander all over the place as the designers struggle to fit a two-mile or 5K loop into a small park, kind of like how DNA compacts itself down to fit two yards of genetic information into a cell the size of a pinhead. I like the non-paved terrain, though; the North Lake course was probably about 80% on grass and the rest on a dirt trail. They marked it well and had two water stops although I can’t remember the last time I drank in a 5K. Oh wait – it was in this race.

Before the race one of the organizers made a little speech about how glad she was to see so many people there and what a great day we had for running. As alluded to earlier, it was about 70 degrees and 80% humidity; personally I thought the weather was more conducive to spectating than to running. When I got back to my car, my parking tag for work had melted which I’m pretty sure means that there’s eighteen more weeks of summer.

05/24/09: Mississippi 10Miler

2009-05-25T17:09:00.004-05:00

One thing sort of missing from the Mississippi 10Miler in St. Paul, Minnesota, is the Mississippi River, despite the race course running along a sidewalk on Mississippi River Boulevard. The river is there, off to the west somewhere, but only an occasional glimpse of the river far below the bluff can be seen through the constant foliage. It’s an attractive course, the Ford Motor Company manufacturing facility not withstanding, but the scenery was blandly attractive, mostly large, well-tended lawns of various houses and churches. Not that I was complaining -it wasn’t too long into the race before I was working too hard to give a damn what kind of landscape we were running through.

The race was put on by the Minnesota Distance Running Association and it’s a basic club run, I’m pretty sure. The course is basic - run five miles south from the intersection of Mississippi River Blvd. and Summit Avenue, turn around, and come back, and the below-average entry fee ($15 race day, $10 pre-registered) doesn’t include a t-shirt, which there are t-shirts available for $8 except there weren’t any extra-large or large available by the time I registered so I guess eight bucks for a race t-shirt is considered a good deal in Minnesota. I passed on the shirt and I would have passed even if they had my size; I don’t need to pay eight bucks for a shirt that I’ll probably wear twice before throwing into the clothing donation bins in the Target parking lot in Grapevine. Yes, I wash them before giving them away.

Driving to the race I listened to The Neon Bible by Arcade Fire which may be the most awesome CD I own that I never listen to. (Not to self: Move “Intervention” and “The Neon Bible” into my Choice Tracks play list at work.) “Keep The Car Running” and “No Cars Go” are excellent motivational tunes to listen to before a race, although they may be better suited for a 5K rather than ten miles. I kept my enthusiasm in check, though; I ran the first mile in about 8:50 and my final two miles were my two fastest, 7:53 and 8:07. Although I didn’t totally trust their splits and I did accidentally dump my data (not a euphemism; note to self: don’t try to store splits while staggering around immediately after the race) so who knows?

Driving back to the hotel postrace, I continued listening to The Neon Bible although in one respect it bummed me out. I’ve had the CD for maybe two years now and I’ve listened to it maybe a dozen times - this is mostly because I’m now more likely to listen to stuff I’m familiar with rather than something new. If this had come out while I was in high school, two things would be true: I’d have bought it on vinyl because CDs weren’t around yet and it would have taken me maybe a week to listen to it twelve times. Maybe less. Oh well, better late than never, I guess - it’s always worked for my running.

05/14 & 05/16: Katy Trail 5K and Sean May Memorial Run

2009-05-17T13:33:00.012-05:00

I spent a good part of this weekend committing at least one of the Seven Deadly Sins: I flew into Denver for a trail race in Brighton and did a training run the day before on a trail south of Boulder; I would kill to have trail options like this around Dallas. For the record, Envy, not murder, is the Deadly Sin I committed. Murder, per se, is not a Deadly Sin so if you do kill someone, do it for reasons other than Anger, Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Pride, or Lust.

Before coming to Denver I ran the Katy Trail 5K in Dallas Thursday evening and then pigged out in the VIP tent at the picnic on shrimp, salmon cakes, steakettes, and chicken quesadillas, washed down with Fire Rock Pale Ale. They had vegetarian options as well but I didn’t want to add Gluttony to my list of transgressions so I passed on them, hoping to exhibit some restraint. I think it worked until I went back for seconds on the shrimp and salmon. And the beer.

The VIP tent was new this year, the deal being that for a hundred bucks (as opposed to the regular race fee of $30 or whatever) you received, in addition to the normal entry, a Friend of the Katy Trail membership, a running cap, and a pass for the VIP tent. I wouldn’t pay the money expecting a material return of approximately equal value but I’ve been giving them $100 for the past few years anyway - I consider it my annual user fee. So if they want to throw some perks my way for the money, I’m cool with that.

I don’t know if the VIP tent will be back next year; it didn’t look like many people signed up for the deluxe package. Although I suppose many of them could have done what I did - load up on food and good beer, then head over to mingle in the main picnic area. Still, I think next year I may be back to swilling Michelob Ultra with the common folk.

I heart the Katy Trail, I really do. It runs 3.5 miles from Airline Drive down to the American Airlines Center and while the main trail is paved with concrete, there’s maybe 2.5 miles of adjacent soft-surface trail. Over 2.5 miles, from Knox Street to the AAC, is free of street crossings. By Dallas standards, it’s an incredibly great place to run, or walk, or roller-blade, which makes it a great place to people-watch (which could lead to another Deadly Sin) in spring and autumn. In Boulder, though, and northern Colorado in general, it would probably be just another pedestrian walkway.

I was driving down South Foothills Highway looking for the South Boulder Creek West trailhead. It came up sooner than I expected which meant that I went flying past it; I figured I’d turn around at the next traffic light and come back to it. The Marshall Mesa trailhead was at that particular light, though, so I ran there instead - four miles or so along the Marshall Mesa, Community Ditch, and Cowdrey Draw trails. I thought these were great but I’m guessing that, to locals, there just some random trails.

Saturday I ran in the Sean May Memorial Run, a nine-mile race around Barr Lake, on a packed-dirt trail that we could really use in north Texas. Sean May was an Adams County Deputy District Attorney who was shot and killed in August, 2008; this was the first annual run and proceeds will support Access to Justice programs. The organizers put together a helluva goodie bag; in addition to a blue technical running shirt it included a water bottle, a star-shaped squeeze ball, a small pad and pen in a cloth folder, another pen, a post-it pad, lip balm, sunscreen, and body lotion. Hauling all this stuff back to DFW, I may wind paying an overweight luggage fee.

Being as it was the inaugural running, there were some glitches. Runners in both the nine-mile (referred to at times as a 15K but I think it was probably nine miles) and 5K were directed to the start, where the 5K people found out that they were actually supposed to start back by the bridge we crossed walking to the start. They recovered quickly; they told the 5Kers to hang out behind the nine-milers until we had started, then they walked them back to the bridge and started them from the proper location. I guess - that was their plan but I was gone by then.

Gone on my way around Barr Lake, that is. We ran and ran and ran some more, except for a couple of walking bits I threw into the last couple of miles, but mostly we ran. In my case, for 1:17:43, give or take a walking break or two or three, which left me satisfied and in need of a nap. It’s amazing what an escape from warm temperatures and high humidity can do for your running. Or my running, at least.

05/09: Run for Kids 5K

2009-05-13T14:26:00.009-05:00

The announcement dude had one final note for us before he passed the microphone to the leather-lunged starter woman for whom it was probably superfluous – he warned us of a couple of speedbumps (one painted, one au natural) that we’d have to negotiate just after the start. I appreciated the information. Last week in Albuquerque, I kept on tripping over all these damn speedbumps that I had no clue about and that were spaced far enough apart to encourage amnesia; in addition those were stealth speedbumps, unpainted and wide and shallow, which is probable safer in that really I stumbled more than I tripped but were still a pain in my butt. Although not as much a pain as I might have felt if I really had tripped.

I had at least six local races to choose from except they were all 5Ks so really, I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice at all. I went with the Southlake (home of the Southlake Carroll Dragons – the race was staged from Carroll High School) Kiwanis’ Run for Kids 5K because they were giving away a mesh bag as part of the goody bag, which also included a water bottle, a lethal weapon disguised as a letter opener, an issue of Health magazine, and authentic-looking ‘70s-style wrist sweatbands. Along with the usual t-shirt, all for a $20 registration fee. I love schwag.

The generosity of the race organizers extended to prize money. Both the male and female winners received a thousand bucks and there was also a team competition where the top five-person teams, both male and female, received $500. Double dipping was not allowed, though, which came as an unfortunate surprise to Kip Chemirmir, who won the race but was also a member of the winning men’s team – which meant he forfeited the individual cash prize to Clint Bell and received a much smaller check for his share of the team winnings. Well, the checks were the same size but the amounts were substantially different.

The course meandered through suburban streets south of the high school and featured stealth mile markers. I was looking for them throughout but it wasn’t until near the end – I’m guessing about a tenth of a mile from the finish – I saw a 3 painted on the ground. Which wasn’t where I was looking for them for the most part. Talking to a guy I knew after the race, he said he saw the first two but he thought the first one was way off. He ran about 6:30 pace –a fairly even 6:30 pace, he thought – but his splits for the first two miles were 7:12 and 5:58. So maybe it’s just as well I didn’t see the first marker; I would have been bummed beyond belief to find I had run like an 8:40 or slower opening mile.

The awards ceremony was in the football team’s indoor practice facility and featured a small health fair going on concurrently, which allowed me to score a couple of plastic cups and a small tube of sunscreen. More schwag, which made getting up at some unGodly hour on Saturday all worthwhile.

05/03: Run for the Zoo 10K

2009-05-07T09:13:00.002-05:00

If you have any desire to do Albuquerque’s Run for the Zoo – and really, if you’re a runner I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t – if possible, do the 10K. The downside is that it starts at seven in the morning but the upside is that the 5K (actually, the first 5K) doesn’t start until 8:30, which means that all the best parking spots are still open. It’s probably a sign of my advancing years that I now consider hassle-free parking worth waking up ninety minutes early.

With one exception, the course is not challenging; that exception being that the course is in Albuquerque and Albuquerque is approximately 5000 feet above sea level. Actually, in places Albuquerque is exactly 5000 feet above sea level but without the proper equipment, or a helpful sign, you never know if you’re in one of those spots. At any rate, running in an approximately mile-high city (even one that doesn’t make such a big deal out of it) takes a little bit extra out of you when you live at an altitude of about 500 feet. I think the course was described as pancake flat which wasn’t precisely true but which was true enough that to argue otherwise would seem argumentative or, even worse, whiny. There was one small psuedohill on the course that we ran up late in mile one and down about halfway through mile five, and some other sections probably had some slight slope to them but at altitude I tend to die going uphill and this course didn’t have anything long enough or steep enough to kill me. Which was nice.

The race starts on streets just east of the zoo and goes through a small , soft-surface, section of the zoo late in mile one, much to the interest of several camelids. Miles two through four, and a healthy chunk of mile five, are on what looks to be a park road (more like Angela Hunt’s idea of a park road than Tom Leppert’s) west of the zoo. The rest of the course is back on city side streets only now we were north of the staging area whereas originally we had run south from there. After finishing we stagger around for a while hacking up a lung and trying to relocate our breath; at least that’s what we do if we are me.

The race features a $10,000 altitude bonus – ten grand will be paid to a men’s time better than 27:52 or a women’s time faster than 32:13. I asked a volunteer what happens if, say, more than one guy came in under 27:52. She said that only the winner would collect the bonus; she sounded certain but then again, she is a volunteer and I hope we all remember what Bill Murray said about them. In any case, the question was purely hypothetical – the men’s winner ran 29:13 and the women’s 36:34. Which means the winner nipped me at the tape by 22 minutes and change. And probably wasn’t hacking up a lung afterwards, either.

04/14/09: Talladega 21000

2009-04-15T14:05:00.006-05:00

Being a participant in the inaugural Talladega 21000 – a half marathon, so it really should have been the Talladega 21097.5 Meters – may some day be as notable as running in the first Boston Marathon or seeing the Beatles in the Cavern Club. Probably not, but that’s okay – it was still interesting and fun to run in the race, which included about four miles on, or pretty much on, the famed racetrack, including a couple of passes around the steeply banked turns, which we ran alongside the turns because there’s no way in hell we could have run on them. It was like running next to a wall, almost. One or two miles went under the grandstand and bleachers, which didn’t mix well with Garmins, and a mile or so through the infield, which was near the end (most of mile eleven) and I don’t remember well because I was dying. Plus more miles around the outside of the track and on some of the neighboring streets, including one stretch up the entrance to the speedway.

The course wasn’t very hilly but what hills there were tended to be steep and artificial – leading up behind the banked turns, leading up to the grandstand, leading up out of a tunnel onto the infield. There also wasn’t much shade on the course, not counting under the grandstand. We received a short-sleeve tech shirt at registration and a tech running cap at the finish; it was an overcast day so it didn’t matter but in the future they may want to consider providing the hat before the race. On a warm, cloudless day, it could come in handy.

Before the race, some guy in a Talladega Superspeedway pick-up kept on telling us to stay behind the blue wall; I thought he was referring to a sequel to some famous 1972 adult entertainment but that, in context, didn’t make much sense. I figured maybe he wasn’t actually associated with the speedway – maybe he was just some guy who knew how to hotwire a truck. I mean, there was blue wall and we did stay behind it – until the race started and we had to run on the other side. Sorry we hurt your track, mister.

After the race, which after an hour or so couldn’t come soon enough for me, they had a party in the pit garages featuring BBQ sandwiches and mediocre beer, but no soft drinks. Which I only mention because I really could have gone for a Dr. Pepper but even if they had soft drinks, the odds on Dr. Pepper being available still would have been slim. This wasn’t Texas, you know.

I think if they want to they could turn this race into a huge destination event; the people at packet pick-up seemed taken aback by this year’s turn-out but I gotta believe there are many NASCAR fans (small percentage, but a small percentage of a large number can still be a large number) that would love to run on this track. They said they had 400 preregistered and thought they might get up to 500 or so. The results show 325 finishers in the half and another 74 in the two-mile but I’m assuming the results don’t show anyone who decided not to wear a chip. Regardless, I’m pretty sure 400 people would be considered pretty good for an inaugural race and with more aggressive marketing, I think they could at least double that by next year.

03/14/09: Dash Down Greenville

2009-03-17T12:58:00.008-05:00

Worst. Dash Down Greenville. Ever.

Okay, that’s more harsh than it is true even if it was my slowest, by two seconds, and the weather for the race was the worst I remember but it wasn’t all that bad – chilly and damp, but not cold, not rainy, not windy. Had it been any of those things this race report would be based solely on guesswork. See enough sunny, 60-degree race days and you start to get a little spoiled, I guess; this was just a mildly crappy day at the end of a meteorologically challenging week. Anyway, for all the gloom attendance didn’t seem to suffer much – 2128 timed finishers (including No First Name Mason and Forrest Gump) this year as opposed to 2156 last year and 1761 in 2007.

In past years this race was sponsored by Two Rows brewpub; not long after last year’s Dash the Greenville location of Two Rows closed. Central Market stepped up to handle the hosting duties, which was a profitable move on their part – I stopped in between the race and the Dallas St. Patrick’s Day Parade for a coffee and two shamrock cookies. These are cookies shaped like shamrocks, not cookies made of shamrocks. I think.

The change in venue also meant some changes to the course, the most important of which was a reversal of direction which is actually beneficial – it puts the hilly section of the course (Southwestern Boulevard) earlier in the race instead of having it lurk just before the finish. The next major change was to eliminate part of Southwestern Boulevard in favor of the section of Caruth Haven between Greenville and Southwestern, which may have also taken some hills out of the course. Finally, they eliminated some turns by staying off of Milton and the unknown side street – Matilda, maybe – and just having us run down University all the way to Greenville, then turn to the north and head to the finish.

So they made all these changes that should make for a faster course, and I ran a disappointing 25:21. Too much bratwurst (that’s not a euphemism – I had brats for lunch three times this week) and not enough exercise in recent days, I guess. Adding insult to, well, insult, my nemesis tied me. Maybe. For some reason, the results are listed with times down to the hundredth of a second except all the hundredths are give as .00. I like to think I edged him by a tenth of a second or so.

02/14/09: Haltom Stampede 5K

2009-02-16T10:16:00.006-06:00

7:09. Hopefully there will be a time later this year when running a 7:09 mile at the start of a 5K won't feel like a tragic mistake; it'll feel like either I'm right on schedule or perhaps dawdling a bit. Right now, however, a 7:09 opening mile means I've started too fast and there's a terrible price to be paid in the near future. In the case of this year's Haltom Stampede, that bill came due late in the second mile when we turned a corner and headed up an inauspicious hill that shouldn't cause me any trouble but in this instance humbled me and slowed me to a walk. My mile splits for this 5K were 7:09, 8:34, and 7:34 , and it's not like I was running according to some shrewd plan I had devised. I should have known better; I spent most of the first mile on the heels of one of DFW's better female masters runners, who normally finishes a 5K a couple of minutes before I do. Today? She bettered my 24:04 by about two minutes.

I seriously considered blowing this race off, even though I had registered the day before. Had the race started at 8:00 rather than 9:30 or if it had been windier, I probably would have written it off as too cold and raw. Unfortunately weather would be the only justification for bagging but conditions weren't unpleasant enough; it was just mediocre crappy - cold but not frigid, breezy but not blustery. So I ran, except for when I walked.

All things being equal, I like the idea of the 9:30 start at this time of year, but all things aren't equal - I have ultimate at noon in Las Colinas and the late start brings my less-than-stellar time management skills into play. I went straight from the finish line to my car which was in one respect unfortunate; according to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, my mediocre performance got me third place in my age group, entitling me to one of the unique and prestigious Haltom Stampede ceramic buffaloes. I'd like to thank the Academy, of course, but even more I'd like to thank all the better runners who found something better to do this particular morning.

I would have liked to have had more time to hang out afterwards, and not just to pick up my buffalo. The people running this event do one thing that's very important for a potentially cold-weather race: they have, in the Haltom City Recreation Center, a comfortable indoor staging area. They also seemed to have a good amount of postrace food, including animal crackers which I think I could probably eat my weight in animal crackers. So maybe there's an upside to me having to leave immediately after finishing - more animal crackers for everyone else. Anyway, I had to get to Irving in time to help my team lose both our games Saturday afternoon. I don't know if they could have done it without me.

01/31/09: Tal Morrison 15K

2009-02-06T10:33:00.006-06:00

By seven o’clock Saturday morning, I was parking up on the softball field at Winfrey Point because all the primo parking had been scarfed up; at eight o’clock I was standing in the largest crowd I’ve ever seen at a Dallas Running Club race, at least among their races that are free to club members. Which I am, having paid $25 for the privilege at the beginning of the year and now, having done for free two races that would have otherwise cost me $10 each, I’m closing in on making that look like a sound financial decision.

The Dallas Running Club has made a major push to increase membership over the past few years and now claim to be the third largest running club in the nation (my guess would be that the New York Road Runners Club and the Atlanta Track Club are bigger) with over 3000 members and I’m pretty sure their club races have grown along with the membership rolls. When I ran the Bloomin’ Four-Mile in 2006 there were 164 finishers; when I ran it last year they had 378. The Tal Morrison scholarship races went from 170 finishers in the 15K in 2006 to 235 between the 5K and 15K in 2007 to 572 between the two races in 2008 to 750 in both this year. Maybe it’s the increased membership, maybe it’s the appeal of less expensive races in dark economic times but yeah, I think these races may be growing some.

I was at Winfrey Point to run this year’s edition of the Tal Morrison (founder of the Cross Country Club of Dallas, precursor to the Dallas Running Club) 15K; three mornings after a Category 2, maybe even Category 3, ice storm, Dallas was headed to a high around seventy. At 8:00, though, it was a brisk 37 degrees so I went with shorts and a long-sleeve shirt; one benefit to a large crowd at the start is that there’s more body heat to keep you comfortable when you’re underdressed for the weather.

The course started to the north and looped the lake, crossing over from east to west on Mockingbird. They’re still working on the spillway and probably will be for months, so once again we got to avoid the shaky bridge and instead ran along Garland Road instead. I started back in the crowd and ran conservatively, hitting the first mile at 9:06 which is right about where I passed the dude who passed me at the end of the Frigid 10K. I never saw him again during the race today; except for one small hiccup, I ran every mile progressively faster (8:48, 8:31, 8:33 (hic), 8:24, 8:21, 8:15, 8:13, and 7:59), finishing in 1:18:31 (watch time), about six minutes ahead of him and feeling like I’ve restored some small sense of order to the universe.

Club races, especially club races in off-season months when the racing options on a particular day tend to be limited, tend not to be tremendous ego boosters as serious runners tend to show up and casual runners tend to stay home, present company excluded. I finished 20th of 31 in my age group, 139th out of 249 men, and 179th out of 417 overall, in a race where I was actually happy with my time – for now. If I run a 15K in decent fall weather, I’ll be shooting to break 1:15.

01/10/09: Bold in the Cold 15K

2009-01-13T08:55:00.005-06:00

Some boldness was required to run the Lake Grapevine Runners and Walkers (LGRAW) Bold in the Cold races, whose flavors included 5K and 15K. I did the 15K because I needed to get the mileage in and because I’m still living in the (distant) past, when I could run nine miles in the morning and play Ultimate all afternoon with no ill effects. Besides, it’s not like I knew in advance we were only going to have three guy subs. Oh, well. They say pain is temporary but the medal is forever; of course, I’d actually had to have won a medal to know the truth of that cliché.

The hardest part of just running in the cold is actually stepping outside; the toughest part of racing in the cold is the standing around waiting for the stupid race to start. Once you get started and warmed up in either case it usually isn’t that bad although there was a stretch in this race – from about the second half of the third mile through maybe the first quarter of the fourth – where we were running north towards Lake Grapevine in the open and straight into the wind. The 25 mile-per-hour wind. That kind of sucked. Because as ‘it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity’ is to summer – a lasting cliché because it’s essentially true – so is ‘it’s not the cold, it’s the wind’ to winter. We were running in the epitome of that cliché with the 36 degree temperature not helping matters much, even if it did feel almost reasonable in the rare moments when the wind ceased its abuse for a second or two. To someone (i.e., me) wearing two long-sleeve shirts, at least.

I had to swallow a certain amount of pride to run this race because I’ve been a member of LGRAW for maybe three years now and it’s embarrassing to race in front of friends when you’re so far off your game – especially when the main reason for being so well-rounded is too much TV time and not enough training. This lack of training will likely make itself more apparent over nine miles rather than three but like I said, I needed the mileage – it’s not like I got much the last two weeks of 2008. And LGRAW is my club – in the sense that I’m a member, not that I own it or anything – and I want to support it and besides, it’s not like I’m going to get back into reasonable shape by hibernating for the winter, however few days it should choose to actually make an appearance in north Texas. I trust these guys to be too polite to comment on my turtle-like pace, which in this instance carried me to the finish line in 1:23:50 or so – a 9:01 pace which if I had known I was that close to a nine-minute pace, I’d have kicked from slightly further out to see if I could get it down to at least 8:59. It just sounds better. I finished 9th out of 18 in my age group, 65th out of 100 men, and 95th out of 212 overall, which just goes to show that I shouldn't expect to make any money from this sport.

01/03/09: Frigid 10K

2009-01-07T09:36:00.003-06:00

The Dallas Running Club held their Frigid 10K (and 5K, but I didn’t run that so it’s an afterthought) two days early; they ran it on Saturday when the tempature at 8:00am was a balmy (too balmy) 65 degrees (with 90% humidity – best decision I made? Not wearing my sunglasses – they would have been fogged the entire time.) while on Monday it was 33 degrees, with occasional precipitation, at about the same time. Not that I’m complaining. In fact, quite the opposite.

I planned on holding back early in this race; I thought I was holding back, at least some, with an 8:44 first mile. But after an 8:58 second mile, I knew it would be a struggle – a Titanic struggle – to maintain that pace for another four miles. Awareness was gradually dawning that running only three times for a total of 16 miles since the White Rock Half wasn’t such a good idea, especially when one of those runs, a nine-mile loop of White Rock Lake, was done just two days prior to my current race. Somehow I had managed to simultaneously undertrain and overtrain.

I ran a pair of 8:53s – one good thing about this race, because of repairs to the spillway, we couldn’t use the shaky bridge and had to run on Garland Road instead – and then in the fifth mile I learned how much rust accrued during my little running vacation: I ran, no walking, ran that mile in 9:22 and it’s not like I was holding back – that was all I had. On a positive note, when I needed a walking break at the end of that less-than-stellar mile, I knew it wasn’t like I was tanking a really good race. But on the downside, I got passed at the end by a guy who hadn’t beaten me in a race since 2006 – according to athlinks.com, I had beaten him nine straight times, including by nearly seven minutes in a five-mile race last year. Even the downside has an upside, though – if that doesn’t motivate me to get my ass in gear and start running more, nothing will.

I took advantage of the race to renew my membership in the Dallas Running Club, which cost me $25 this time around. Last year it cost me $20 which meant I had to run two of the free club races ($10 for nonmembers) to break even; I ran two (the Frigid 5K and the Bloomin’ Four Mile) and also saved $5 with a member’s discount for the White Rock’N’Roll Five-Mile which is a club race on steroids – it’s one of three that members have to pay an entry fee, the others being the Trinity River Levee Run and the Dallas Half Marathon, which they like to call The Half. At any rate, if I do the same races this year that I did last year, I will break even, at least.

For my rousing finish of 56:52 (57:04 according to them), I finished 164th out of 310 overall, 115 out of 177 among all men, and 15 out of 21 in my age group. In other words, I didn’t medal.

12/14/08: White Rock Half Marathon

2009-01-05T16:39:00.005-06:00

Somewhere around and between all the traffic jams and mob scenes and pomp and circumstance at the White Rock Marathon and Half Marathon, they actually managed to run the races. The races seem like something between an afterthought and a necessary evil, overshadowed by the expo and the flyover and the dancing elephants and the talking giraffe which I probably sound like a grumpy old man right about now but that’s because I don’t want hassle; I just want to run. Unless I’m tired, in which case I just want to walk, or nap or whatever.

It’s always interesting to hear the different perspectives people have on the weather – spectators thought it was great, half marathoners mediocre, marathoners piss poor. Driving down to Victory Park sometime before seven in the morning, the weather bulletin board on 183 showed a temperature of 67 degrees and humidity of 67%, but it didn’t feel quite that bad mostly because it was overcast and windy. Running the half, the skies stayed cloudy and the wind helped keep me cool when I was running into it, most notably while running south on Skillman. Around 10:30, after I was finished, I was standing outside the American Airlines Center and I saw the sun come out from behind the clouds and I knew things were about to get a lot tougher for the marathoners and half marathoners still out on the course.

I started the half way too close to the front of the pack; my strategy was try to keep up with the crowd as best I could while working my way to the outside as quickly as possible. Then, once I felt like I was out of the speedsters’ way, I’d drop back to a pace I felt more comfortable with. For the first three miles my legs felt like lead mostly from playing too much ultimate frisbee the day before (league games – couldn’t be avoided) but once I got used to a certain level of discomfort it never really got any worse. I cruised through the first ten miles at about 8:30 pace before tiring and slowing; I took one walking break of about two-tenths of a mile around the 12-mile mark and finished in about 1:54:30. An unofficial 1:54:30; my stupid timing tag came off about halfway through the race. I was happy with my time mostly because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to run more than half the distance and wound up running it about as fast as I did the Madison Half.

I wasn’t nearly as happy with the postrace food as I was with my run; it was severely downgraded from what I remembered them having the last time I ran this race two years ago. Then they had the food on the floor at the AAC and it was take as much as you want and they had all sorts of cookies and fruit and chips and other stuff (maybe even pizza); this year they had a tent sent up between the finish lines and you could shuffle through there and pick up one granola-type item, one yogurt-type item and one fruit-type item. I think I wound up going to Denny’s where I ordered up one Gran Slam-type item.

11/27/08: Turkey Trot

2008-11-29T18:46:00.007-06:00

They’ve been running the Turkey Trot in Dallas for 41 years now; I’ve run it for two. The first eleven years it was held at White Rock Lake, from the Bath House “to the big oak tree and back”; apparently the big oak tree was about four miles away and so the eight-mile distance was established, although supposedly it was actually 8.2 miles. How they figured that out in those pre-Garmin days, I have no idea. At any rate it’s now the largest running event in Dallas, which I scoffed when I heard that because I thought the Race for the Cure was bigger but apparently they only had 25,000 participants this year while the Turkey Trot had about 34,000 between the two races.

In 1979 they moved the race to downtown Dallas; in 1984 they added a three-mile fun run. New this year was the Chrono Track D disposable timing tag which came attached to the bib number, from which it was easily detached and then attached to the laces of the running shoe of your choice, preferably one of your own that you would actually be wearing for the race. The advantage of this over the usual Champion Chip was that every race that uses the Champion Chip requires that the chip be picked up the morning of the race. The Turkey Trot (eight mile) started at 9:00; I could have had someone drop me off at Wood and Ervay at 8:55, squeezed my way into the starting hordes and been ready to go. The disadvantage is that it’s a one-time use item but, as the Turkey Trot website points out, “You may keep the chip as a souvenir.” Perhaps someday they’ll become family heirlooms.

I saw what I thought was a gaggle of young Amish women before the race; eventually I realized that they were running the race constumed as Pilgrims and the Dallas Morning News reported that they were members of the Plano West High School cross country team, which happens to be the alma mater of the race winner, Scott MacPherson, who currently runs for the University of Arkansas. Costumes are not unusual at the Turkey Trot although turkeys and native Americans are more commonly seen than Pilgrims.

As for me, the race had one embarrassing feature: about a half-mile into it, my bladder was urgently requesting relief. As we entered Deep Ellum, I ducked down a side street, up an alley and behind a dumpster to attend to some personal business. Almost immediately, a truck came into the same alley and stopped on the other side of the dumpster; luckily they were too busy doing whatever the hell they were doing to bother ragging on me for public urination. What with the crowded start and the unscheduled pit stop my first mile was 10:59 but after that the race went pretty well, considering I was sick Tuesday and Wednesday with a cold. I finished in 1:08:57, 2064th out of 7174 overall, 1593rd out of 4086 men, and 175th out of 481 in my age group. In other words, just one small part of the huddled masses yearning to be done.

11/23/08: Ole Man River Half Marathon

2008-11-25T14:23:00.007-06:00

I woke up at some ungodly hour Sunday morning and drove from the Vieux Carre Holiday Inn to Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park, which for a city as lyrical as New Orleans you’d think they’d come up with a better name for a park than that. I registered for the Ole Man River Half Marathon, a race, put on by the New Orleans Track Club, whose name made more sense in previous years when they ran it on Ole Man River’s levee but this year they moved it to this new location, took a few pictures, stretched, drank some Gatorade, visited the restroom, and made my way to the starting line. The race started, I ran for a while, walked some, ran some more and walked some more in various proportions, and eventually finished in 2:10:40 or so. I ate a couple of pancakes, drank some water, walked around for a few minutes, and then took off. Since then I’ve been trying to think of something to say about this race but the truth is, I got nothing. It happens.

This is in no way a knock on the race; I probably could have been running Bay to Breakers this particular morning and noticed nothing out of the ordinary. I did think the course was bland when we were running on Marconi Drive along the west side of the park and on Wismer Drive on the east side of the park, but I also think the first few miles when we were running through the interior of the park north of the stadium might have been interesting had I actually been awake. I think it’s a good deal that this was mostly just a training run for the http://www.trackshark.com/blogs/entry.php?w=bourne231&e_id=3641, and I’m also glad that my previous experience racing in New Orleans (Jackson Day 9K, 1996 - I flew in the morning of the race which is one way to keep this city from wearing you out) was more interesting because I spent too much time Saturday touristing it up in the French Quarter - me and about a jillion Packer fans - to do this race any kind of justice. Although I did manage to get to sleep before Oklahoma was done crushing Texas Tech’s BCS dreams (or maybe not!).

I managed about an 8:30 pace for six miles, fading to an 8:50 for the seventh mile and then walking some; my 2:10:42 (according to the official results; I'm sure my Garmin has me faster than that. My Garmin is my friend.) placed me 354th out of 505 overall, 245th out of 300 men, and 37th out of the 46 dudes in my age group. My proudest moment came when I walked the entire eleventh mile in 14:55; my happiest moment was either immediately after crossing the finish line or when starting to chow down on the postrace pancakes. Although they weren’t quite as good as the half slab of dry-rub ribs I got at Corky’s in Metairie later in the afternoon, just in time to watch the end of the Jets-Titans game.

11/01/08: Conference USA Cross-Country Championships

2008-11-02T22:08:00.009-06:00

You wouldn't know it by Sunday's Dallas Morning News, but SMU won a Conference USA championship on November 1st, in women's cross-country. Watching the finish, I thought they won in a rout; their red uniforms stood out in a sea of blues and whites as they placed five women in the top twelve. It turned out that a lot of the whites - particularly the runners in third, fourth, and fifth - were worn by athletes from Rice, who made things closer than I thought, scoring 50 points to SMU's 40. Silje Fjortoft of SMU was the overall winner in a course-record time of 16:46 for 5K, which maybe I could have done in college (with training) but then again, probably not.

The men’s race was dominated by Tulsa and UTEP; they combined to fill all the spots in the top ten, led by Tulsa’s John Beattie who won the 8K race in 23:30, one second ahead of Japheth Ngo’joy from UTEP. UTEP took third and fourth also but Tulsa filled fifth through eighth, which gave them 27 points to UTEP’s 30. UTEP only entered five runners; all five finished in the top twelve.

Cross-country is a weird stew of competition and camaraderie. Two East Carolina girls were standing along the straightaway before the final turn to the finish and one of their runners passed by, hard on the heels of a Tulane dude. "Catch him!" "Pass him - every point counts!" The next runner to pass was another Tulane guy. "Go Tulane!" "Run hard!" There is empathy in cross-country but no mercy.

The races were hosted by the University of Memphis and run at the Mike Rose Soccer Complex in southeast Memphis; they consisted of multiple loops around the various fields before finishing in the main stadium. The fields are on different levels so the hills consisted of running up and down between fields and there's not much shade - it was a cloudless morning and a little on the warm side for running three or five miles. In general, if the spectators are comfortable, the runners probably aren't. I was spectating and I had no complaints. I was happy to be spectating – had I been in the women’s race I probably would have finished 87th out of 92 and had I been in the men’s race I probably would have finished dead last by about six minutes. Tim Cullen of Tulane probably wishes I was in the men’s race.

Running is like golf - you don't win so much as you just lose least. It's got to suck to be running at the heels of an opponent, feeling like you're going to puke and hearing your coach and teammates yelling at you to catch him, pass him, beat him. And then you finally enter the stadium, maybe a quarter-mile to go and you know you're finishing way out of the scoring and you feel like you're holding up the show, you and the stragglers around you; for the race you're in your time sucks but you could enter any local 5k or 8k and beat 90% of the field. But where's the challenge in that?

The Morning News did show the Conference USA Championships some love on Monday. On page 14C, in agate type, they did publish the team results from the meet. Women's race only.

10/31/08: Running Scared 5K

2008-11-02T19:49:00.006-06:00

I was not happy.

I was not clinically depressed or volcanically pissed-off, either; mostly I was just dissatisfied, dissatisfied with a 22:44 in the Running Scared 5K on Halloween. Which being dissatisfied is potentially a good thing if it pushes me to train harder and expect more from myself. Right now, though, I feel like for as hard as I ran - and I'd put this effort up there as one of my top three efforts this fall - I should have done better. Although I'm also entertaining fantasies of the course being short despite a lack of corroborating evidence.

The Running Scared 5K is put on by Memphis Heritage which means it's staged from an elegant house on the corner of Madison and Edgewood in Midtown Memphis. It's on Halloween every year (well, both years seeing as this was only the second annual. But they plan on having more and they plan on keeping it on Halloween.) so it's directed by the Tooth Fairy and other runners included a guy riding an ostrich, Dorothy from Kansas by way of Oz (and her little dog Toto, too) complete with ruby-red running shoes ("There's no place like the finish line!"), Wall Street Greed (complete with tutu made out of fake money which made me think she was an exotic dancer at first - which may have been the point), a ninja turtle, a hot witch, a harlot or a French maid or at least somebody sleazy in a short skirt and fishnet stockings, a clown, a NASCAR chick, and assorted ghouls and zombies. I was dressed as a Serious Runner but I was wearing a UT-Arlington UnderArmor shirt featuring the school's nickname (Mavericks) so if anybody asked I suppose I could say I was a Republican. I wonder how that joke will play in, say, two weeks.

The course is fair, moderately hilly but the toughest hill, early in the second mile, earns its degree of difficulty more for length than steepness. The first two miles seemed accurate enough but the third was way off unless I really did run it in 6:20, which I didn't. That's fine - I'd hate to think I ran the last tenth in 2:15 because I'm pretty sure I could walk faster than that. I finished seventh overall and I thought I may have been top master, but some old guy ran 22:13 so I guess I wasn't, but I was first in my age group. Which is rare enough that it's still noteworthy, at least to me. I did beat the top woman, the aforementioned ninja turtle who ran 23:04 and probably would have kicked my butt if she wasn't carrying her house on her back. I passed her at about 1.5 miles; I though about pacing off her some but I didn't want to freak her in out in such a small race along dark streets.

The postrace party was back at the elegant house and featured lots of food - bananas, cookies, doughnuts, Halloween candy, and beer of the Bud and Bud Light variety, in cans. I had a can of Bud Light; it was reminiscent of drinking in high school. The awards ceremony featured each medal recipient getting their picture taken with the Tooth Fairy, then another Memphis Heritage dignitary judged the costume contest, in which I appropriately did not place. Dorothy won, followed by the guy riding an ostrich, with Wall Street Greed third.

10/04/08: Vineyard Run 5K

2008-10-05T14:35:00.005-05:00

I finished second in my age group at the Vineyard Run 5K in Grapevine, which was surprising on the one hand and embarrassing on the other. I thought I could sniff out hardware possibilities pretty well and my trophydar was decidedly inactive for this event; in fact, I thought third place in my age group would require a sub-twenty. Turned out it was 24:15 and my 23:44 (okay, 23:47 by their clock) was good enough for silver.

If I was going to cherry-pick a race, I’d start with a day that had a full schedule of races to choose from and then I’d look for a smaller race that hadn’t been around very long. The word ‘inaugural’ carries some weight here. If the race had multiple events, like a 5K and a 10K, then it moves up on the scale and I’d plan on doing the shorter race because the more serious runners will gravitate towards the longer run, but if they encourage doubling up in the races or if it’s put on by a running club then it moves back down the scale. The Saturday Dallas Morning News had six races listed for this day; the Sickle Cell Walk / Runathon in River Legacy Park (Arlington) would have been my choice if I was primarily interested in winning a trinket. The main caveat with this race is that events that emphasize walk over run don’t always do age-group awards. The SFI 5K in the Trinity Commons Shopping Center (Ft. Worth) or the Trinity Bright Halloween 5K in Trinity Park (Ft. Worth) would have been my second choice; on the one hand I haven’t heard of either of these races before but on the other they were being held in high-profile locales. The Fall Breakaway 5K (TCU) or the Vineyard Run 5K are a toss-up after those two races; I ran the Fall Breakaway last year and didn’t place then but I think the Vineyard Run is bigger. The least likely candidate was The Loop 15K and 5K put on by the Dallas Running Club at White Rock Lake. I don’t think I’ve ever placed in a DRC (or its precursor, the Cross Country Club of Dallas) race even when I’ve run well.

Viewing the results, turns out I could have run virtually anywhere and placed except for The Loop 15K, where I would have had to break 1:02 when I figure I'd be struggling to break 1:20. But my 23:47 would have gotten me third at the 5K there, second at the Trinity Bright 5K, and second (actually, probably third - second was 23:51 and that's the one course that I think was probably more difficult than the Vineyard course) at the Fall Breakaway 5K. I couldn't find results for the Sickle Cell Runathon or the SCI 5K; the first probably because it was untimed and the second because it may not have actually existed. A race with that name was run on August 2nd (I would have won my age group) and I'm wondering if maybe somebody was misinformed about the date.

The embarrassment was because I dogged it some in the third mile. In a just world, you’d have to put out an honest effort to place but in reality, all you have to do is run faster than whoever shows up. At about 2.5 miles I came through a connector path between back-to-back cul-de-sacs and there was a short, pain-in-the-ass hill in front of me. I was tired of running hills and I wasn’t going to break 23 minutes, and I was feeling a little warm, so I walked it. No big deal, I’ve walked in races before; I just don’t know that I’ve ever won an award despite walking. Actually, I take that back - I’m pretty sure I did one time before but I ran 20:30 in that race. I probably needed to walk then; today I didn’t. I was just lazy and now I’ve got a fancy-schmancy wine glass to show for it. Yes, I recovered from my embarrassment long enough to claim it.

The race was entirely on the road, unlike the Run Through The Vines down near Bryan where part of the course actually does go through the vineyards.

09/26/08: Race Judicata 5K

2008-09-28T18:26:00.008-05:00

The Race Judicata 5K, put on by the Dedman School of Law at SMU and run through neighborhoods north and east of the campus, is an obscure yet pricey race that feels almost like crashing a private (but not snobby private) party, only without any alcohol. Most of the runners, and sponsors, too, for that matter, had some connection to the legal profession, which I haven't had since 1993. And that's not a pleasant memory, not counting the dismissal.

Since the race was near the aorta of the Park Cities, it behooved me to ascertain that my car's registration and inspection were up to date, particularly since I drive an older (2002) vehicle that isn't of upscale lineage. My Honda just came out of the shop Friday; I'd have kept the rental car (a Chevy Aveo - but a registered and inspected Aveo) for the race if my car hadn't passed inspection. I think I've received two tickets for expirations in Highland Park, in about ten minutes of driving time spread out over many years. Now if something's out of date I avoid those towns completely.

This race was much smaller, with fewer than 100 runners, than last week's Oktoberfest run and the weather, although numerically similar, felt more comfortable, probably because most of the streets were shaded. There was a better opportunity to run fast; I just didn't feel like I was the person to do it.

I ran 21:41, which for me would be very fast now that I'm old, maybe one of my top three times for the past seven years. I think the course may have been short.

The race organizers handed out course maps before the race. They said the course was clearly marked by flour on the ground but they were just as clearly worried that people would go off course. They had reason to be concerned - we went off course. We took a wrong turn maybe 2.5 miles into the race and returned to the finish by a different route than intended. Perhaps they forgot to give a map to the operator to the lead vehicle, not that I actually remember there being a lead vehicle. At any rate any distance lost by this deviation was probably minimal; we missed out on a slight jog to the north and picked up one to the south instead.

A Map My Run of the planned route showed a distance of 3.06 miles; if that was the distance I ran then my time would extrapolate to 22:02 or so, which is still better than I'd expect right now. Of course I'd have a better idea if my Garmin's batteries hadn't died early in the second mile.

Nobody was collecting race tags or compiling results afterwards although the first male and first female each won a $50 gift certificate to Luke's Locker. Unless they contracted out the tabulations to a psychic, I wouldn't expect to see any results on line. Certainly not accurate ones, in any case.

For any perceived bitching and moaning that my have come across, I should say that it was a fun race and I'm glad I showed up, except for maybe squandering a 21:40 in a lesser race. Small races can have some appeal and this one did; a fun run through pleasant neighborhoods in a non-competitive environment. People I talked to before and after the event were unfamiliar with the racing scene and here they got an introduction without being overwhelmed.

Thirty bucks for race-day registration is a little steep, though.

09/20/08: Oktoberfest 5K

2008-09-22T15:46:00.007-05:00

If you travel north on Midway Road from Beltline Road in Dallas, you’ll go under a modestly cool-looking bridge that wasn’t designed by Santiago Calatrava. I used to be ignorant of which road took you over that bridge but now I know – it’s Arapahoe Road and I ran over that bridge, both going out and coming back, while running Addison’s Oktoberfest 5K. Some – me, for instance – would say that the bridge is the only interesting thing about this race while others might make a case for the free beer afterwards. To my mind free beer is more good than interesting.

I don’t want to slag this race; it’s a fun, well-organized event and the bib number gets you into the more traditional Oktoberfestivities later in the day. I wouldn’t choose to run here if I was looking to run fast, though – it’s too large (900 chippie finishers plus however many who couldn’t be bothered to pick up their chip) and there’s no effort made to give the more competitive, or at least time-conscious, runners room to maneuver. I didn’t see much in the way of mile markers, either, just a chalk mark scrawled on the ground at mile one. For all of that, though, I wasn’t dodging many walkers early on. Despite starting slow (first mile at nine-minute pace), I was weaving in and out of traffic a lot but the vast majority of that traffic was at least jogging.

We started facing west on the side street to the north of Addison Circle Park, turned south on Addison Road and then back west on Arapahoe. There’s a hairpin turn maybe a half-mile past the bridge, which is the only hill on the course except you have to go over it going out and coming back so I guess it’s the only two hills on the course; after the hairpin turn the course doubles back on itself – the start is also the finish, and doesn’t that sound zen. They had people handing out water bottles just before the finish which I thought was strange, but I took one anyway because I thought maybe there wouldn’t be any available on the other side of the timing mat. There were.

Besides the beer and more usual postrace food like bagels and bread, they had soft pretzels. So I guess that would be another unique feature of this race, and another one of which I approve. I like soft pretzels.

It had been slightly cooler than usual for this time of year but today the temperature was closer to normal. I felt uncomfortably warm over the last half of the race although that was probably also due to having picked up the pace: according to my Garmin, which I believe when it’s in my favor, I ran the last two miles and change at 7:30 pace. I finished in 25:34, which was acceptable given my conservative strategy and current condition; if I’m still running this slow in about a month, then I’ve got a problem. I finished 13 out of 44 in my age group, 152 out of 463 in my gender, and 190 or 191 out of 891 overall. The age group listings and the overall listing give different results.

09/07/08: South Nyack Ten Mile Race

2008-09-10T08:05:00.007-05:00

At 7:30 in the morning, or thereabouts, I was standing on a side street of a side village in New York, down the cliff from 9W, waiting for the start of the South Nyack Ten Mile Race. I ran four miles the day before but it didn’t go well. Fortuitously, Tropical Depression Hannah, which was depressed because it had suffered through two major demotions, came through over night and cleared out all the humidity that had dragged me down during that run.

I was happy to drive down from 9W to get to the village of South Nyack; I knew the course was an out-and-back with the turnaround on a pier and I was afraid we would start off down a humungous hill that we’d be struggling back up at the end. As it turned out we would face a daunting climb towards the finish but first-time entrants, at least, were blissfully ignorant and wouldn’t spend the first eight or nine miles dreading it.

The race had 386 runners and it was semi-chiptimed, meaning that we wore chips but they only had timing mats at the finish. If I had to guess – and since I don’t know, I either have to guess or ignore the question totally – I’d say that they didn’t have mats at the start because it was on a road still open to traffic. Most of the course, except for a trail section at the end and maybe the pier, was open to traffic but that was probably more of a pain in the ass to motorists than a significant hassle for runners. One lady leaned out the window of her Dreadnought to tell me I was going five miles per hour; she threw me a frowny face when I was passing her at the time. If it makes her feel any better, I was probably going close to, but not quite, seven miles per hour.

The main road we ran on, which was the main road through South Nyack and Piermont, was crowded and narrow with shops and restaurants. The street would not have looked out of place on Cape Cod except for the lack of souvenir stores. At any rate we ran along there for a couple of miles until we got to the Piermont Pier, which was not the rickety wooden structure I was expecting but rather a paved road surrounded by foliage extending out into the Hudson River. We passed the five-mile mark after the turnaround, closer to the mainland end of the pier, which meant we were going to have to deviate from the outbound course if we were going to make the ten-mile total. I didn’t dwell on this thought which is why I was surprised when, late in the ninth mile, we turned left away from the start and had to climb a moderately monster hill – steep, but not too long. I walked it but in a shorter race I could have run it.

Climbing up the hill took us up almost to 9W which meant we were now uphill from the start; the race finished on a soft dirt trail that was well-shaded and sloped gently down to the finish less than a mile away. Ignore these results – there was no timing mat at the start and I don’t insist on being in the front – I finished in the middle of the pack in 1:31:54 (according to my Garmin! Ask Spareribs - page 24!), running the first seven miles or so reasonably well and staggering through the last three.

08/18/08: Bat Cave 8K

2008-08-18T13:27:00.006-05:00

Every summer in recent memory, I’ve hit a point where I’ve despaired of ever running fast, by my standards, again, and every year there’s been a race that reassures me I haven’t totally lost it. The Midnight Chase would have been that race except I hadn’t hit my nadir of confidence yet – that came a couple of weeks later when temperatures regularly went into the triple digits around here. Instead it was the Bat Cave 8K, a mostly trail race in the Lakewood Forest Preserve off Route 176 in Wauconda, Illinois, that restored my confidence in my mediocrity.

I ran 40:46 - which isn’t that great – but I was happy with it because the course was moderately difficult (rolling hills, soft surface) and because I was able to run faster for longer intervals than I’ve been managing during the recent Dallas heat wave. Which ended about a week ago, by the way, although I bet we see at least one encore before fall moves in. I finished 8th of 13 in my age group; 38-flat, which would be an accomplishment for me on this course but not totally out of the question, would have gotten me fourth but I would have had to beat 33:57 to medal. Given that my 8K PR is 34:10 and came in 1996 on a flat road course in cooler weather, I think it’s safe to say that 33:xx likely isn’t in my future. I haven’t given up hope of running a five-mile race at sub-7:00 pace, though.

Despite the name, we saw no bats and no caves during the running of this race. This came as no surprise as the race website said we wouldn’t; the race was named after a bat sanctuary located inside the park. The race information was a model of accuracy – in addition to predicting the absence of bats and cave, its description of the course as rolling and challenging was spot on. “Rolling and challenging” are usually considered code words for ‘supplemental oxygen may be required’ but these hills weren’t too bad except for one just before the turnaround that we got to run down (didn’t seem like such a big deal then) before having to make the ascent. Mostly it was just a constant up and down that made the course difficult but given that trail races aren’t the best choices for PRs and summer races aren’t the best choices for PRs, it wasn’t that big a deal, at least not to me.

When I’m running well, a race for me tends to be a game of leapfrog as I pace off one person for a while, then move up and pace off someone else and so on, for as long as I can. I was behind some dude at the halfway point and planned on pacing off him until the three-mile mark, but he got a drink at the aid station and slowed to a walk so I moved up to the next person, a cute twentyish girl. I was right behind here when her dad passed by running out towards the aid station; I was very self-conscious that he thought maybe I was leering lewdly (or maybe luridly or lasciviously – I’m not sure where the differences lie either) at his daughter. I passed her soon afterwards. She struggled mightily going up the big hill while I only struggled moderately.

Incidentally, according to the results I’m the same age as her dad but several minutes faster.

7/19/08: Too Hot To Handle 15K

2008-07-21T13:29:00.012-05:00

I blame myself. I believe that one of the keys to happiness is avoiding unnecessary frustrations and yet I ran Run On's Too Hot To Handle 15K this year anyway. It's the sixth time I've run this race (1997, 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2006 being the other years) so I guess I can't claim to have learned from experience and I guess I shouldn't count out doing it again next year. If I do, expect another bitchy post.

The main problem with this race is that it's huge (2500 runners, so I heard, although only 1700 or so show up in the results) and yet they still insist on holding it at Winfrey Point. I didn't even try to park at Winfrey Point; as I was approaching Garland Road coming south on Buckner Boulevard, it looked like traffic turning onto Garland Road was backed up to Poppy Lane. My prefered parking location already being full, I wound up parking at the Stone Tables.

Judging from various t-shirts and tank tops, many Team in Training initiates and running class newbies were running one of the races. They lined up much more appropriately than usual as I wasted much less time, and energy, dodging walkers in the early stages of the race than I'm accustomed to. In fact, they did better than a couple of experienced runners I noticed who didn't let the fact that they were walking alter where they lined up.

A personal note to the girl in the blue tank top - it's not a good idea to come to a complete stop ten seconds into the race because an iPod earbud has come unmoored, lest you inadvertently engage in inappropriate relations with the older gentleman running behind you.

Y'all still need to work on your water stop etiquette. Don't come to a complete stop as soon as someone hands you a cup of water - there's a better than even chance that someone's coming up behind you. Wait until you're clear of the station and move to the side and then you can walk or stop or lie under a tree and drink without impeding other runners.

By the time I got to the water stop near the four-mile mark, they had run out of cups and were encouraging people to reuse the cups that littered the ground. I passed but I was also irritated - it doesn't seem like it's too difficult to identify a cup-shortage problem before the race and to correct it by hauling ass to the nearest convenience store and buying more. Running stores get involved with races partially for the marketing opportunities but that strategy can backfire when people come away from the event thinking it was poorly run.

I eventually finished (1:40:ish, there was a good amount of walking after the first five miles), drank some liquids, and took off. As I cruised down Garland Road, I saw that departures from Winfrey Point were going much more smoothly than they had in the past. The Dallas Police were directing traffic from Emerald Isle to turn right onto Garland Road where they had two lanes blocked off. Of course you still had the random driver who insisted on getting left as quickly as possible so he could make a u-turn, but it was still a vast improvement over having a vast line of cars back up into Winfrey Point while one stylin' dude in a Chevy Behemoth waits for a break in traffic so he can turn left onto Garland Road.

07/12/08: Moonlight Chase Four Mile

2008-07-16T10:56:00.004-05:00

The Moonlight Chase is a four-mile race in Eldridge, Iowa, that starts at 9:00pm on the second Saturday in July. The nine o’clock start has its good points and its bad points: on this particular second Saturday in July, running conditions were downright reasonable by the time the starting gun was fired. On the other hand, if you’re casual about details – and some of us are! – and you show up at 6:45ish thinking the race starts at 8:00 because you don’t want to be rushed while registering, stretching, and otherwise checking out the scene, the extra hour of waiting can be excruciatingly painful. It’s a nice race and town and all, but it doesn’t warrant that much checking out.

A manic young dude started talking to me before the race. Eventually I realized that he was partially scoping out the competition - which meant that he was wasting his time on me, given that he’s fourteen years younger and maybe five minutes or so faster over four miles. I don’t know how he actually did (although I’m guessing 26:53); he said he was shooting for 25 minutes but I got the feeling he was more concerned with placing than time. He also expressed concern that there might be more cheating in a night race – people slipping off course and back on later so as to run a shorter distance – but I don’t think it’s too likely. For one thing, the course is lined with spectators so it would be difficult to avoid being seen.

I ran 30:06 which was good enough to be slightly disappointing in that I would have liked to be seven seconds faster. The course was lined with luminaries (except for one stretch where they had tiki torches instead) as well as spectators and the race organizers considered that a major selling point but as a runner I don’t think I’m in a position to fully appreciate them. When I’m running hard, or at least attempting to run hard, I’m not as aware of my surroundings as I might otherwise be. I did look up and see the moon at one point ; it was maybe three-quarters full. I wondered if they timed the race to match a fuller phase of the moon or if they held it the second Saturday in July even if the new moon fell on that day. I guess my mind wanders more than my gaze does.

Iowans being the chatty people they are, I talked to a couple of people after the race – the usual how did you do, isn’t this weather whatever type stuff. One common element, mention sometimes in passing and sometimes with laserlike focus, was the Bix. “I’m training for the Bix.” “I’ve got to be ready for the Bix.” The Bix may be the most prestigious non-marathon road race in the Midwest; I don’t think there’s anything comparable in Dallas. The Turkey Trot is large but I don’t think it’s a must-do for many of the more competitive area runners; the Dallas Half Marathon would like to be that race and is closer than the Trot to getting there but I don’t think it has nearly the same cachet. The Bix is run over a bitch of a course in the middle of the summer and people are beside themselves eager to run it. It’s a real measuring stick of a race.

Maybe I should check this Bix thing out some time. I missed it by a week this year.

07/05/08: Independence Day 5K

2008-07-08T12:50:00.007-05:00

The Dallas Running Club’s Independence Day 5K does not start at Winfrey Point. It starts at Sunset Bay which is just north of Winfrey Point and which I had read in the Dallas Morning News on Friday, only it didn’t register. I parked at Winfrey Point, I strolled up to the building at Winfrey Point, and despite the obvious lack of activity, I tried the handle of the door(to the building at Winfrey Point). It was locked.

I decided to check the parks building at Sunset Bay because, while there weren’t a lot of people around, there were a lot of cars parked at the bottom of the Winfrey Point hill and I did see a guy wearing a bib number jog by. As soon as I started off in that direction, I remembered that the paper said the race was at Sunset Bay so everything was cool. An added bonus about starting here was that an out-and-back 5K course wouldn’t reach to the shaky bridge.

After a mostly sleepless night, and after running and lifting vigorously the day before, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to approach this race. Before the start I saw a guy I recognized who I knew was slower than me, so I decided to pace off him for the first mile and then see if I could pick it up. The first mile felt too easy, which was how it was supposed to feel, and we ran it in 9:29, but the strategy paid off as I ran the next two miles in 7:49 and 7:43 before finishing with 45 seconds for the last tenth, giving me an overall time of 25:48, 8:19 pace. Which was tons better than last week’s 27:36 dedicated to keeping Austin weird, especially if you don’t factor in that it was closer to eighty at the start than it was to one hundred.

After the race I hung out for a while watching all the people I beat finish (the guy I paced off ran a 27:36 or so which means he picked it up also) while trying to figure out where to breakfast, and I checked out the posted results (which were messed up in places – they had no time for me and one age group where the second place finisher ran faster than the first place dude but slower than the guy in third place) while wondering where to breakfast, and finally I took off and got in my car, hoping it had some Insight on where I should breakfast. Turns out, it did. It beelined for Eatzi’s on Oak Lawn which isn’t very crowded at nine o’clock in the morning, and I got migas, which the only problem with their migas is that they overload you and I was only able to finish half of them, and breakfast sausage, which the only problem with their breakfast sausage is that it’s highly addictive and I know several people who have had to go into sausage rehab. Which if you have to have problems, those are okay problems to have.

06/28/08: Keep Austin Weird 5K

2008-07-01T14:59:00.006-05:00

Three young women, barely old enough to legally suck down their Zeigenbocks, were robbed in broad twilight at the Keep Austin Weird 5K when their clever convict costumes, based on the chain-gang escapees from “O Brother, Where Art Thou”, went unrewarded and unrecognized despite the fact that they ran the race handcuffed together. It is a deep, dark disappointment that I didn’t get to see how they negotiated the water stops.

The costumes were all about keeping the weird in the Keep Austin Weird 5K; costumes that were recognized included a magician and his bunny, two girls sharing one canoe, beer keg guy, baa baa sheeple, and the All American Girls, whose main attractions were the pinwheels attached to their bosoms. Oh, and the guy whose costume made it look like he was riding on the back of an old lady; that one was pretty good actually but it was also distracting as I couldn’t help but try to deconstruct the illusion.

The race itself was the most forgettable part of the evening; the temperature was in the high nineties when I started and it was still in the high nineties when I finished. Starting the race at 6:00 on an early summer evening, they must be as intent on keeping Austin sweaty as they are in keeping Austin weird. I tried to start slow and I sort of succeeded – my time for the first mile wasn’t very fast but I expended a lot of energy working for a mediocre time. The race continued in that vein; I wound up finishing in 27:36 and was just glad to be done.

I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the food in the runner’s area after the race but that may have been due to the heat. I ate half a slice of pizza and picked at a small bowl of salad but I didn’t feel like eating. I also drank a bottle of warm fruit punch and one of cold water; liquids, particularly cold liquids, were much more appealing. I also picked up my race t-shirt; it was cool and came in an ecofriendly shopping bag.

After going off to change into dry clothes, I wandered into the main festival area where various food and drink, including beer, were available for purchase. The beer options were Bud and Bud Light in cans, Zeigenbock on tap, and Independence, a local brew, available in an unknown format because I never saw any. I went for Zeigenbock, which is Anheuser Busch’s attempt to compete with Shiner, and it was tasty and cold. I spilled a little, though, when the Checker Cab guy tossed me one of his promo discs and I had to sky to make the grab. Later I had two more beers and a couple of mini-cheeseburgers while rocking out to What Made Milwaukee Famous, watching the costume contest awards presentation, and folk-rocking out to Alejandro Escovedo.

The race and festival go a mostly thumbs up with one caveat: it’s pricey. I paid forty bucks at late registration; had I signed up in advance (before June 26th) it would have been $35. On an individual basis it may not seem like you’re getting your money’s worth but considering the venue (Auditorium Shores along Town Lake) and the entertainment, it doesn’t seem like they’re just pocketing the money, either. A free beer or two would be nice, though.

06/07/08: Bloomin' Four Mile

2008-06-08T18:29:00.004-05:00

I think I need to find me some P.F. Flyers, the better to run faster and jump higher with; I know I need to find some friendlier weather but it's only June - it's going to get worse before it gets better. For the Dallas Running club's Bloomin' Four Mile race it was 79 degrees and 77% humidity which made for a heat index of about a jillion. Not that it would be any better, but I wonder if they've ever considered having one of their summer runs in the evening.

I had a plan - run the first two miles very conservatively and try to pick it up over the second half of the race - but several things went awry not the least of which was not following the plan very well. I ran the first two miles in about sixteen minutes, which would qualify as very conservative if the temperature was about twenty degrees cooler, but today it was a faster pace than I was expecting for the entire race. Which meant there was much walking and gnashing of teeth over the last two miles but at least there was more teeth-gnashing than there was walking. The second, and third (out-and-back course), miles traversed the dreaded shaky bridge which has been my main source of motion sickness for the past ten years. Maybe I should start taking Dramamine before running at White Rock Lake.

Actually after a long walking break in the third mile - longer than intended as I decided to walk to the mile marker and I was further away than I thought - I decided to forget about the race (except for staying on course and stopping at the finish line) and just run intervals for the last mile. I ran hard, like near-sprint hard, for 100 steps (counting one foot only) and then walked for 60 steps. I did three sets and then jogged the rest of the way in, finishing about 35:06. Which isn't an auspicious start to a new (birth) year but does mean I have lots of room for improvement.

I was expecting to run with some relay club members but I didn't see any of them at the race; there was a happy hour the night before that I guess wound up being happier than anticipated. I did see Grapevine Mike, who actually lives in Dallas County but who I know from running in Grapevine. I hung out with him some before the race and more after the race but not so much during the race as he finished well ahead of me.

While hanging out after the race I tried one of the many free Accelerades they had available. My flavor of choice was fruit punch and I should keep in mind that it was warm but I wasn't too impressed and I'm not in any hurry to fork over cash money to give it another try. For now my carbohydrate-and-protein drink of choice remains Nesquik although I'll pass on that, too, if it's served warm. I drank the dregs of the Accelerade after I got in my car and drove off in search of breakfast. You can tell the racing season's hit a lull when you get back to your car after a race and your windshield doesn't have a single brochure on it.

05/25/08: Mad City Half Marathon

2008-06-05T14:05:00.007-05:00

Thirteen.1 Notes on the Mad City Half Marathon

1. The half marathon starts at 7:25 at the state Capitol building - fifteen minutes after the full marathon and twenty minutes before the quarter (and personally I think these subdivisions are getting silly) marathon - and finishes at the Alliant Energy Center maybe three miles away. So I had to get to the finish line a little after six to catch a shuttle to the start, which is why I'm not a big fan of point-to-point courses.

2. I hadn't planned a strategy for this race so when I saw the 1:50 pace guy lining up near me, I decided to stick with him for as long as I could. If I could hang for ten miles, I'd be happy no matter how crappy the last three miles were. Unless my death was literal rather than figurative, of course.

3. I ran this race two years ago in 2:xx:xx on a day when it was 79 degrees and 72% humidity. Today it was more like 63 degrees and 54% humidity, which is one of the reasons I came back. The other is that I like Madison; it's a cool city.

4. The race started promptly and it also started downhill, which is nice on a point-to-point course. It's a moderately hilly route although it does have two long, mostly flat sections: along Lake Mendota around miles six and seven and around Monona Bay and heading towards the back of the Alliant Energy Center, towards the finish. Although they do throw in one last nasty little uphill just before you turn into the parking lot.

5. I wouldn't say the crowd support rivals Boston but I was surprised by how many people were out cheering early in the morning.

6. The first part of the course goes northeast from the Capitol along the isthmus separating Lake Mendota from Lake Monona before turning around and returning to downtown via Johnson and Langdon Streets. So a lot of the downhill in mile one turns into uphill in mile four, I think.

7. The University of Wisconsin section of the course goes along the Temin Lakeshore Path and along some roads on the west side of campus, including past Camp Randall Stadium. Which is fine by me; if they took us through the main part of campus we'd wind up running some hills worth bitching about.

8. I don't remember much about miles eight through eleven but what I do remember is mostly bad - a short out-and-back around Vilas Park, which I hate out-and-backs and wish they'd find a way to eliminate it; running up a pedestrian bridge late in mile nine to get across North Shore Drive; and noticing about halfway through mile nine that I'd already sped up to my "God I want this to be over with!" pace, which isn't a good pace with 4.5 miles still to go.

9. I made it through mile eleven in 1:31:44 (8:20 pace) before cratering and losing contact with the 1:50 people.

10. The last two miles weren't totally horrible, just mostly so. There was some walking but I ran more than I walked.

11. I actually had a quick left after mile thirteen. I guess that was the payoff for dogging it those last two miles.

12. The medals for all the races just say "Mad City Marathon" and are color-coded by race (red for marathon, yellow for half, white for quarter); in addition, the name of the actual race run is printed on the (also color-coded) ribbon. Marathoners sometimes bitch when the shirt or medal doesn't distinguish between the various distances.

13. I grabbed a bottle of water at the finish line, but didn't bother food. I didn't even go all the way through the line - I didn't see anybody carting around anything that looked particularly appealing.

13.1 1:54:31.

05/15/08 & 05/17/08: Katy Trail 5K & Warbird 10K

2008-05-30T14:10:00.011-05:00

I ran the Katy Trail 5K on Thursday evening in Dallas and the Warbird 10K on Saturday morning at the Warbird Brewing Company in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I’ll probably run the Katy Trail 5K next year while I’m not too likely to come back and do this one but that’s only because I’ll probably lose track of the date, or not be able to get a flight, or to to try a different race elsewhere. It will have nothing to do with preferring the Katy Trail 5K over the Warbird 10K; in fact, I like both races and prefer the Warbird race to the Katy Trail one.

While neither race is particularly small, the Katy Trail 5K dwarfs the Warbird races (which include a 5K in addition to the 10K; both races start together) by about 4,000 or so to slightly less than 1,000. I count this as a point in the Warbird’s favor – I prefer races in the 500 to 1,000 range. They’re large enough that they’re probably going to have good support and a reasonable postrace scene but not so large that you spend as much energy weaving through the crowd as you do running the damn race.

Everything else being equal, the Katy Trail course blows away the Warbird course as it’s scenic, shaded, urbane. The Warbird course runs along some rural-for-now land south of the city along open roads that don’t offer much protection if the day is bright and windy. Which today was, with the sun coming out from behind some early morning rain clouds just as the race started. What isn’t equal, of course, is the number of times I’ve run either of these courses, what with this being the first time I’ve been in Ft. Wayne (hometown of Charlton Heston’s character in “Planet of the Apes”) as opposed to having run along Turtle Creek Boulevard and up and down the Katy Trail about a jillion times each. I like running both those places but I like running new places more as long as they don’t suck, and the Warbird course wasn’t that bad.

The Katy Trail people promote the postrace picnic as much as they do the race – they have tons of sponsors, most of them local restaurants (many of them high-end), provide food. One of the advantages of being at least still moderately fast is that I can be done with the race and down to the food before the lines have had a chance to build up. This year Strong’s Everyday Tavern provided bitching bar-be-que ribs; I also had pizza from Campisi’s and Rocco’s, baked ziti from Terilli’s, and pasta salad from Holy Ravioli, I’m pretty sure. The beer, which I didn’t bother with because I was still slightly hung over from Lazy Bones the night before, was Michelob Ultra. They’ve been the title sponsors for the past few years; the first year I had it I thought it was horrible but every time I’ve had it since, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that it didn’t suck as badly as I remember it from that first time. I guess I have to grudgingly concede that it’s mediocre.

The Warbird food was neither as elaborate nor as varied but I liked it better; their beer was more varied and I liked that better, too. They had small Kobe beef burgers, chili, and pasta salad – the burgers were awesome, the pasta good, and the chili avoided because of bean content. The beer options were a red ale, a yellow ale, and a dark amber something-or-other. I had a red and a dark amber; I preferred the amber to the red but they both beat the crap out of Michelob Ultra.

Neither race was particularly successful for me; I ran the 5K in 23:53 sandwiching a crappy second mile (8:20ish) around pretty good first (~7:15) and third (~7:30) miles. I finished 29 out of 78 in my age group, 283 out of 952 men and 369 out of 1738 among all timed finishers. I ran the 10K in 50:47 (50:59 officially, and I don’t know what caused the discrepancy) and can’t say for sure what my exact placements were – they had some problems with the (non-Champion) chip timing system they used, which was compounded by people signing up for the 10K and then running the 5K. In the preliminary official results, as posted on the side of the brewery, the winning 10K time was 20:20ish – which would be a new world record by about six minutes if it was somehow allowed to stand! The results on line, which look to be much more accurate, show me finishing 16 out of 36 in my age group, 95 out of 209 men, and 113 out of 323 overall.

Two races in three days – it’s almost like the old days of, say, 1997 (58 races). Except I think I was running a little bit faster back then. Of course, I was a lot younger, too.

05/03/08: White Rock'N'Roll Five Mile

2008-05-10T19:25:00.007-05:00

I thought the White Rock’n’Roll Five-Mile race used to be a bigger deal but some cursory research indicated that this may not have been as true as I thought. There were 541 finishers this year as opposed to 828 last year and 636 in 2006, but I didn’t run the race in either of those years. The last time I ran it, in 2005, there were 403 finishers. However, I thought there used to be a five-mile and a 5K; in 2003 I have personal results for something I called the White Rock Road Race 5K which was held the first weekend in May and I’m pretty sure it was the same race only I opted for the 5K over the five-mile. At any rate, given the restrictions of Winfrey Point, where the race is staged, I'm totally in favor of them downsizing.

There were definitely some differences between this year and the last two years, at least: no packet pick-up and late registration at Luke’s and while entrants still received a technical t-shirt, it was now a generic Dallas Running Club shirt and not a race-specific t-shirt. One beneficial difference was the weather: where race day 2007 was 73 degrees and 88% humidity and 2006 was 66 degrees and 87%, this year it was 52 and 59%. Maybe not absolutely perfect running weather (there was also a pretty good wind), but about as good as you can hope for in Dallas on the first weekend of May. Hell, I don’t know that I’ve ever worn a long-sleeved t-shirt during a May race around here before, although had the wind been calmer I probably wouldn’t have bothered. It wound up soaked with sweat by the end although I never felt like I was overheating.

Oops, just found (and remembered) another difference: the course used to go north along the lake to the Bath House, then go up Northcliff and run around that neighborhood before returning to the lake. Apparently they did that through last year; this year we ran out and back on East Lawther Drive. I thought maybe that change was due to homeowner complaints but I guess it’s just another example of them scaling back the race.

I ran acceptably well until I found the results a few days later; my self-timed 38:32 turned into a 39:04 officially as the race wasn’t chip-timed (which is probably another difference from past years) and I started well back of the starting line, with some friends who weren’t going to be running that fast. Making matters worse, I finished fourth in my age group, eight seconds behind the third place guy. Although he could have started as far back as me; I have no idea about that. At any rate, I spent the early part of the race picking my way through the crowd and ran the first mile in about 8:00, then ran the second in about 7:30. I hit the strongest head wind in the first half of the third mile and that slowed me down, I think. But I finished with two more miles at about 7:30 pace, so even though I felt like I was struggling, I didn’t really slow down. On the other hand a couple of guys passed me with sprints at the end – speeding up was not a viable option for me at that moment.

04/26/08: Blue Key 8K

2008-04-28T13:26:00.006-05:00

I was about fifteen miles north of Phoenix when I saw the sign ELEVATION 2000 FT; it was the first clue I picked up that maybe I should have gone to Madison, Wisconsin, for the Crazy Eights 8K if I was looking for the opportunity to run fast. My mind flashed back to the map I checked Thursday, specifically the small symbol just north of Flagstaff. Highest point in Arizona, it said. 12,643 feet, it said. Mount Flatlanderyou’rescrewed, it said (I’m pretty sure).

By the time I got to Flagstaff the elevation was at 7000 ft., although I really didn’t notice much difference until I went out for a late afternoon run. Then I noticed a lot of difference as I basically staggered through 3.5 miles, getting a little lost in the process although I eventually found my way back. Still, I was shaken by the experience and it took three beers (Vienna Lager, Railhead Red, India Pale Ale) at the Beaver Street Brewery to restore my equilibrium. I had some spicy chicken penne pasta to go with the beer; it had a nice alfredoish sauce, reasonable pasta, and substandard chicken that I’m pretty sure came to the restaurant pre-diced. The meal didn’t suck, it just could have been better.

The Blue Key 8K or whatever the hell this race is called is a small, low-key, slapdash affair and thank God for that. If I’m going to have a crappy race, there’s no better place to do it than in obscurity – in this case Northen Arizona University – home of the Lumberjacks! – in Flagstaff, Arizona. There was a 5K in addition to the 8K and the races had a combined start; there were probably about forty runners between the two races. I ran my ‘8K’ in 41:30, which, given the altitude, would have been pretty good except that my Garmin reported my actual distance as 4.6 miles and my pace as an even 9:00. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m bitching about the course being short – short is fine, especially under circumstances (like not being in great shape, like running over a mile above sea level, ect.) that make setting a PR highly improbable. If the course was long, then I’d be bitching.

Besides, the course may not have been short; it’s possible that we didn’t actually run the official course. We could have inadvertently missed an out-and-back or side loop section as the course was confusing at times and they didn’t have volunteers at every turn. Less likely, I suppose it’s possible that being at altitude threw off my Garmin. I think the distance it reported was approximately accurate, though; I’d be surprised if my overall pace was under 9:00.

I have no idea how I finished in the race – I can barely comprehend how I finished the race – and I doubt I’ll ever find out. The race had a minimal web presence for informational purposes, although it was listed on active.com, and I’d be surprised to see results show up online. Which won’t stop me from looking, of course, as poking around the internets is second nature by now.

Much as I’d like to see how I did, I’d also be interested in seeing what the split in finishers between the 5k and the 8K was. The crowd was small but included some good runners; the last time I remember being in such a strung-out chain of runners was a 5K in Arlington, Texas, in 1997 or a 10K in Idaho Falls in 1996. It’s different to be in a race that small and I’ll look back on it fondly next time I’m in a Dallas megarace.

03/15/08: Dash Down Greenville 5K

2008-03-19T15:43:00.003-05:00

The Dash Down Greenville flies under the radar as a major Dallas race; it has no prestige despite drawing somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 participants (2,155 chips recorded), being part of the Crosson Dannis racing series, and existing for about ten years now. Nobody I know considers it a must-do race the way they do the Dallas Half, White Rock, or the Turkey Trot. This is probably due to two reasons: must-do races tend to be later in the year and they also tend to be longer than a 5K. In addition, the Dash Down Greenville is really overshadowed by the St. Patrick’s Day Parade that takes place soon afterwards and which draws maybe five times as many people.

I dashed down Greenville for the second year in a row and the fourth time ever; my time this year (23:20) was my second-fastest ever for this race and over a minute slower than last year but also my fastest 5K thus far this year by about a minute and a half. So I can spend this week's runs obsessing over whether this particular cup is half-empty or half-full. The weather this morning was reasonable for running – 60ish in both temperature and humidity with a noticeable wind out of the northwest. The wind was strong enough, and cooling enough, that I went with a long-sleeved t-shirt – last year’s Dallas Half Marathon shirt, as a matter of fact.

It’s stupid to let organizational inefficiencies bother you in a race this size, so I guess I was stupid this morning. I didn’t like the way they did the chip dispersal, to say nothing of the fact that I hate having to pick up my chip the morning of the race rather than with the rest of my packet. They had the signs showing what chips were available in different sections of the tables hanging from the edge of the tables which meant that when the crowd got more than two-deep they were hidden from view. Had they attached the signs to the fence behind the tables, they would have been much more useful. Also, a few minutes before the scheduled race start, after virtually everybody was lined up, they decided to let a dozen or two vehicles, including one big honking dumptruck, through, which meant we all had to clear a lane for them. It wasn’t an ideal situation for a claustrophobe to be in.

The course remains the same: non-hilly (which doesn’t necessarily mean flat, just gradual, almost unnoticeable inclines) down Greenville, east on Milton, south on Northway (guess – anonymous side street), east on University, and then north on Skillman to the kiddie rollercoaster that is Southwestern Boulevard. I wish they ran this course in the opposite direction – I’d prefer having the hills early in the race – but I guess this way they don’t have to hold traffic up on Lover’s Lane for nearly as long.

After the race I used my free-beer card to get my kicks from a Route 66 amber. I drank the beer and a bottle of water, checked the posted results (256 out of 2155 overall, 23 out of 85 in my age group), and then went to prep up for some serious parade watching.

10/20/07: Double Trouble 5K & 10K

2007-10-23T09:59:00.001-05:00

The Lake Grapevine Runners and Walkers put on the Double Trouble 5K and 10K - for an extra five bucks on top of your entry fee you can officially enter both races. I've been a member of LGRAW for two years now - I joined when I signed up for my first Double Trouble in 2005 - so I can't claim to be able to impartially critique this race. If I were critical of the event I could claim impartiality but I can't think of anything negative to say. It's well-organized, well-provisioned, promptly-run; I wish the course was flatter but I can't say the hills come as a surprise given that I've run them a jillion times over the last few years.

I thought my running was stronger and more consistent at this time last year than it is right now, and these races brought that out. I thought the weather last year was warmer but the weather almanac for the Dallas Morning News doesn't bear that out - it shows it being 47 degrees for the race in 2005, 53 in 2006 and 59 this year. Last year I ran 22:05 and 50:42; this year my 5K (21:56) was slightly faster, but my 10K (52:38) was noticeably slower as the wheels started coming off in the fourth mile. My training lapses over the summer have cost me more in the way of strength than speed.

The 5K was similar to the TCU Breakaway 5K in that I slowed down throughout the race but differed in that the fall-off wasn't as drastic (6:53, 7:03, 7:21 as opposed to 6:56, 7:21, 7:45) and I was able to muster a kick past three miles (38 seconds for the last tenth as opposed to 50 at TCU). Of course, I had motivation in this race - I knew I needed a strong finish to break 22 minutes.

In retrospect, I went out too fast in the 10K, running splits of 8:04, 8:06, and 8:03 for the first three miles before slowing to 8:18 for the fourth mile, 8:50 for the fifth, and 9:32 for the sixth, and 1:46 for the last .2 There was some walking in each of the last two miles; after seven miles or so I was getting tired of running all these stupid uphills. So, I walked some of them although I ran up the last one because even though it's probably my most hated, it's also too close to the finish line and I just wanted to be done with the damn race.

I didn't place in my age group this year - the third place time was 20:02. I had placed each of the last two years - third place both times - so I was a little disappointed but mostly I was wondering where all these aging speedsters had come from. In the 5K, I finished 7th out of 20 in my age group, 23rd out of 106 men, and 25th out of 204. In the 10K I was 8th out 11 in my age group, 37th out of 78 men, and 48th out of 153 overall. I'm thinking of running a 10K this weekend to find out how I can do if I actually focus on that race.

09/29/07: Fall Breakaway 5K

2007-10-02T15:47:00.003-05:00

For the past few years I've wanted to run in TCU's (actually, the TCU chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority's) Fall Breakaway 5K; this year I finally made it down there and I won't be in that much of a rush to hurry back. Or maybe I will, as long as I'm not intent on running a fast time. The race was held on a warm late-September Saturday and has a 9:00 am start time, by which time the temperature had already risen into the lower seventies. The course, which goes through TCU and the neighborhood north of campus, is consistently hilly - there are no individual killer hills, although I think the worst two are the last two on the course, but it constantly goes up and down. Except for starting and finishing in the parking lot between the baseball stadium and the soccer field, I don't remember very much in the way of flat ground.

The hills and heat wore me down and I staggered home in 22:51, 8th out of 16 in my age group, 40th out of about 120 men, and 43rd out of 194 total runners. My splits were 6:54 for a mostly downhill first mile, 7:20 for a moderately up hill second mile, and 7:46 for a more uphill third mile, and :50 for the last tenth. A couple of years ago I would have been happy with this race but now I expect to be more down closer to, and on either side of, 22 minutes. So I was disappointed with this race, but I think I've pretty much gotten over it.

The race was well-organized in some respects - despite a large number of race-day registrants, they started on time - and not so much in others. A lot of those race-day registrants didn't get their chips and bib numbers tied together so at the finish there were many unidentified runners. Apparently they had a way of correcting this but it was time-consuming - the race started at 9:00 and when I left at about 10:45, they still hadn't produced any results. I'm thinking there weren't too many people left by the time they did get the results done, but they did have them up on-line by mid-afternoon. They also ran out of water at the finish area, although they did come up with a few more cases after none had been available for maybe fifteen minutes.

I think they used to start over by the football stadium which I think would be much better - I think it would push more uphills into the earlier portions of the race and let you finish downhill. It would also create for a better parking situation, although as far as I could tell the parking situation worked out better than I would have anticipated, given that the lot they used isn't that big and they were using part of for the start/finish line. Then again, I don't think they got nearly the thousand runners that the girl who took my registration at Luke's on Friday said they anticipated.

09/22/07: Tour de Fleurs 20K

2007-09-25T16:52:00.003-05:00

2206 people - 1084 in the 20K and 1122 in the 10K - toured the fleurs around the Dallas Arboretum, White Rock Lake, and Lakewood on Saturday. Allegedly a race, I think it's really more like a bicycle ride or rally, whatever term they use for something like Hotter'N'Hell. The people up front really are racing but for most everyone else it is, or at least should be, an opportunity to get in a timed, well-supported long run while also scoring a new technical shirt and running cap. But I wouldn't come here looking to PR because it's going to be crowded and that crowd is going to include a plethora of novices, including many walkers, and those novices haven't the first clue about lining up appropriately and don't seem to be getting much instruction in that subject, either.

I lined up towards the back because I wasn't planning on pushing it and it was warm enough and I'm claustrophobic enough that I would have felt ill standing immersed in a crowd for more than a few minutes. Hanging out towards the back and towards the side, I had no problems. It did take me nearly six minutes (5:58.95 according to the results) to cross the starting line but the race was chip-timed so that wasn't a serious issue. I ran the first 10K in 53:15 and the second 10K, with two short walking breaks, in 57:29 for a total of 1:50:44, good for 393 overall, 264 out of 530 males, and 32 out of 69 in my age group. In short, pretty mediocre, but better than average for me for a warm-weather long run.

The first walking break was just before the ten-mile mark; I walked about a tenth of a mile, maybe a little longer, and then started running again at the marker. The second was at 11.3 miles or so and was across the bouncey pedestrian bridge at Garland Road. I hate that bridge and dread any White Rock Lake race that forces me to use it, which is virtually any long one. This race had a double whammy in that earlier we crossed the new pedestrian bridge just south of Mockingbird Lane, which may actually be worse for bouncing when a herd of runners crosses on it. Not only do these bouncing bridges make me feel ill, they also throw off my stride slightly as it seems like my foot is always coming into contact with the ground just before I expect it to.

The after party was on the grounds of the Arboretum, which I don't think I've ever been to before, and featured Emerald City Band, who were entertaining, especially the horn line who kept on wandering all over the place, and featured a female singer who reminded me of one the Team America puppets for some reason. They had a lot of stuff and people were leaving with boxes of goodies - bagels, fruit, iced-tea drinks and the like - but there wasn't a whole that appealed to me so I just drank a water and took an iced-tea for later.