03/27: Crazy Beaver Trail Race

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.