We are planning to run the Waynesville Main Street Mile on Friday night and the Maggie Valley Moonlight Race on Saturday night, and it occurs to me that I have never run races back-to-back on consecutive days like this. I well remember talking to Charles Dotson form Lake Junaluska at my last Main Street Mile, an 89-year-old runner I kept running into at area races, and discovering that he was planning on running a 5-K the next morning. So he is my inspiration. And I hope he is still running and that I will run into him this weekend!
I keep a careful record of all my races, in a little book and on a spreadsheet, and they tell me that I first ran Maggie Valley in 1995 - it was my fifth race ever, and I have run it a total of 12 times now. My fastest time was in 1998 (37:05) and my slowest was in 2011 (41:42). I used to be infatuated with night-time races, and I have enjoyed many memorable evenings on that long mountain with Katy and Martha and many other runners and friends, including Richard Tankersley who is no longer with us. I remember the clear, bright moon overhead sometimes, and driving rain other times; one year a hurricane, the first of the season, was just finishing up dropping what seemed like the entire Gulf of Mexico on us. So it will be interesting to see what conditions will be this year.
I ran the Main Street Mile in 2010 (a surprising 6:48) and again in 2011 (7:09), and thoroughly enjoyed my first-ever street mile. I did not know I could run that fast! But speed is an elusive gift that fades with time, and I doubt that my time in either of these races will be as fast as then. Now is now, and I am just trying to run the best race that I can run. And give thanks that I am still running that long mountain in Maggie 20 years later, and that blazing mile through downtown Waynesville.
Maggie Valley
sometimes in the 1990s.
And I was not supposed to copy this photo.
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