Twilight 5-K

The Twilight 5-K is perhaps our most enjoyable race of the year.  It takes place on our home course here in Highlands - what we used to call the "Patty Cake" route - which is now a USATF certified 5-K course.  We should thank Race Director Derek Taylor and the Highlands Rotary for that; he has turned this event into a well-attended first-class race.  This year, participation was 362, and it was a real joy to see Pine Street filled up with so many runners at the start.

The threat of rain had diminished throughout the day, and conditions were ideal - overcast with a slight breeze.  Many of us wore white hats like the signature hat our friend Jim Askew used to wear:

Jim was a humble man, but I think he would have approved of remembering him in this way.  Mary Jo was there, and I think it made her aware once again of how well-loved this man was among all of us.  And I thought about him throughout the race.  At one point, over on Leonard Street, I passed a young boy running with his Mom and Dad, and he was clearly beginning to falter.  "My legs hurt!" he whined.  I thought to myself, "My legs hurt, too!"  But then I thought, "What would Jim do?"  He would have said something encouraging and picked up the pace.  And that's what I did.

It was good news, too, that Martha was able to run this race, the first time she has been able to do so.  It seems that for some reason whenever August has come around, she has been injured, and this year was no exception; she has been suffering from a pinched nerve in her hip, and only after completing a two-mile run on Thursday did she decide she could run.  But not only did she finish, she took first place in her age group, seven minutes ahead of the second place woman in a group of ten.

I was surprised by a third place award in my own age group of seven, but even more proud that I was able to pick up my pace in the final mile; it seems that these days, although my overall pace is glacially slow compared to past years, I run stronger and faster the farther I go.  And my knee did not hurt at all.  On the contrary, running a 5-K like this seems to "blow out the carbon," as we used to say; everything feels smooth and strong the next day.

But what a good feeling it is to run here on this Home Course, where we run every day, in the same place where we run intervals and mile repeats.  All along the way, familiar faces greeted us at the traffic stations, and friends calling out encouragement to us along the way.  And then it is such a joy to watch our fellow runners finish - Will, with his injured knee, and his wife Gina; Karen, proud that she did not walk a single step; Glenda, glad that she decided to walk the hills and finished well anyway; Fred, finishing in exactly the time he had predicted; Sam, and Brian, and Vicki, and Debbie, and Christine, many of us wearing those floppy white hats all the way to the finish.  Just like Jim would have done. 

And most amazing of all, Davis had persuaded a group of First Responders to complete the course wearing 60 pounds of gear.  There's Diana Cox McPhail standing with the same men who saved the Ravenel house from burning down.

It is a community event, and it is a community that I am proud to be a part of when we see so many volunteers coming together, so many willing participants - not just our running friends but children, and families, and walkers - in this celebration of fitness and health.

Fartleks in the Rain

"You know you're a runner if you can say fartlek with a straight face," we used to joke.  Fartlek means  "speed play" in Swedish, and it is, simply put, a run intermixing fast and slow runner in an unstructured way.  The advantage to running a defined distance in interval training - 400 meters, for example - is that you can compare from week to week and be assured that progress is being made.  In fartlek training, you might run at interval pace from, say, one utility pole to another, or from a mailbox to a tree, entirely on whim and feeling.

It has been a struggle running this week because of the low pressure area that has stalled over our region in the middle of a summer that has already had more than its share of rain.  Tuesday, I was fortunate to be able to find a window of opportunity in the morning just before the downpour began, eventually leaving five inches or more of rain by the end of the day.  Yesterday we had four inches, and today, judging by the rain gauge, it looks like we may reach five again. 

I don't mind running in light rain, and have run both marathons and many shorter races in heavier rain than today.  But speed work goes better on a dry road, and it would also be nice if my two pairs of running shoes which I alternate on each run have a chance to dry.  I say this to convince myself that I am not a wimp.

Today I drove to Town prepared to run another set of 400s and 800s in the middle of a four-mile run, but the rain was just unrelenting.  I sat in the car for awhile looking at the radar app on my phone, but it was solid green and yellow and even orange.  So I decided to drive home, stay dressed in running clothes, and watch the weather.  Sure enough, I realized mid-morning that the rain had almost stopped.  The radar showed patches of blue (light rain).  I did not waste time by driving to Town again, but headed down Sassafras Gap Road, thinking I might be able to at least get in one or two miles of the four miles I had planned before the downpour returned.

The rain was light and cooling, not at all a hindrance, and it had not pooled up very much in the road.  I used to have a mile of 200-meter intervals painted on the edge of the road down here, but a D. O. T. re-surfacing project two years ago covered them up and I have not replaced them.  So it was a perfect morning for fartlek training:  pole to pole, tree to mailbox, fast and slow.  Everything felt smooth and strong this morning, just a little twinge in that troublesome right knee.  Two miles, then three, and finally a fourth mile.  And by then it was starting to come down hard enough that I was ready to stop.

What a good feeling it is, I realized for perhaps the hundredth time in my running life, to have a door of opportunity open just a crack, and to decide to go through it!