Oktoberfest 5-K

Like many runners, I enjoy keeping records of my running and my races.  As we grow older and slower, it can be a little depressing to remember the finish times I used to record – “The older I get, the faster I was!” I like to say.  But it can also be inspiring to realize that, despite injuries and hardships, running has been a constant in my life for forty years or more, and since I began running road races I have rarely missed the opportunity to test myself several times a year.  My best year was 2018, when I ran eleven races, nearly one every month.  Most of those races have been shared by Martha during the last couple of decades, and it is something we enjoy doing together.

Looking back in my records, though, there is a huge gap.  We both completed the Crystal Coast 10-K in Morehead City on March 7, 2020, and did not run another race until 18 months later.  The reason for that, of course, was Covid-19, which killed 350,000 people in the U. S. that year and even more the next year, and which caused race directors around the world to cancel events that had been going on for decades.  Even the Boston Marathon was cancelled that year, the first time in its 124-year history.  What took place instead around the country was something called “virtual races,” where a runner completes the prescribed distance on a course of his or her own choosing, and then sends in the results.  Race Directors are trusting sorts.

We returned from Atlantic Beach after that March 7 race and within a week we were wearing face masks, toilet paper and hand sanitizer had disappeared from the grocery shelves, and we were spraying the soles of our shoes with Lysol when we returned from the store.  What a relief it was to sign up for those first two Covid vaccinations in February and March of 2021.  It is still hard to believe that there was so much “anti-vax” sentiment running wild in the country.  To my mind, vaccinations are one of the best things modern medicine has produced, as most of us well remember who lined up at our schools for childhood polio vaccinations and cheered at the elimination of smallpox.

Slowly, road races began to return in 2021, and we signed up for our first “real” race on September 11, the Never Forget 5-K (in memory of those who died on that date 20 years ago – see post of October 2).  We went on to complete eight races before the end of the year, our finish times faster with each successive race.  One of those races was the Oktoberfest 5-K in Walhalla, which has been going on for nearly 20 years and is only 45 minutes from our house, but which we never entered for some reason.  Believing that we can once again race ourselves back into good condition again after a five-week road trip, we are trying the same thing this year, with the Autumn Breeze 5-K less than two weeks after the 11-mile Cades Cove run, and this race only two weeks after that one. 

It was a perfect day for a race on Saturday morning – clear, 51 degrees, and a light breeze blowing.  There was a new certified course this year that looked even faster than the one we ran two years ago.  The Oktoberfest celebration itself, organized by Rotary, was taking place on the other side of town, and you had to look hard to find any mention of this race on the Rotary website.  “Listen to the OOPS Polka Band while munching on a bratwurst with kraut. Enjoy a refreshing mug of cold German beer. Reunite with old friends. Join the dance floor for the always fun "chicken dance". Explore our amazing arts & crafts with vendors from all over the Southeast. And don't forget an apple dumpling for dessert!”  On Main Street, there was no sign of bratwurst, beer, chicken dancing, or apple dumplings, just a hundred eager runners lining up for the start.  The newly-crowned Oktoberfest Queen, a cute young local woman, did make an appearance wearing her plastic tiara, though, as did three or four large costumed characters who were high-fiving runners at the finish.

We both had a good race.  Martha’s finish time was 34:03, faster than her time both two weeks ago and two years ago, but there was stiff competition in her age group and she took third place.  I was the only man in my age group and so took first place in 39:15, faster than two weeks ago.  (A 77-year old man in the next age group put that time to shame with a time of 26:59 – my competition next year when I will be 75.)  

But there is no predicting your place in a race; it's just a matter of who shows up on that particular day.  The important thing at our age is to keep showing up.