Cocoa 5-K

We have a history with the Cocoa 5-K, a race held in conjunction with the annual Carolina Chocolate Festival in Morehead City.  The Festival, which according to its website “welcomes Chocolate Lovers From Everywhere,” is now in its 21^st year,” and we attended it once several years ago.  Crowds of Chocolate Lovers pack into the Civic Center to view and sample elaborate chocolate creations from 50 vendors, and there is even a pudding-eating contest, where competitors slurp up as much chocolate pudding as they can while their hands are tied behind their backs.  I threatened to enter the contest this year but Martha did not take the threat seriously.

The race has always taken second place to the Festival.  It starts at 8:00 a.m., early enough, we always joke, for runners to finish up and get the hell out of the way for the real event.  And it can be an amateurish event, too, organized by volunteers and non-runners.  One year the race director took the results home with him while finishers huddled in a tent after the race sipping hot chocolate, and we had to look up the results on the internet.  The logo which appears on the race T-shirt every year features a frightened chocolate bar with a corner chewed away as if pursued by predatory Chocolate Lovers From Everywhere.

 I have an uninterrupted five-year streak from our first visit here in 2016 through 2020, which was the year the Covid pandemic arrived and temporarily put an end to road races (and crowds packed into civic centers).  My blog for 2020 reminded me that I had finished in a time of 33:31, and that I had been singled out, slightly to my embarrassment, for being the only runner in the 70-79 age group. 

The weather is often bitterly cold and windy for this race and the course can be difficult.  The first half-mile (and the last) has always been on narrow, treacherous sidewalks with some sharp curves before finally turning onto Evans Street, a pleasant residential street with pretty houses lining the shores of Bogue Sound, circling a traffic cone, and returning.  There was a very nice 5-K in nearby Havelock for a year or two, and the Crystal Coast 5-K, 10-K, and half marathon in Morehead City for several years, but both were discontinued after Covid.  And the flat and fast Run for Autism 5-K in Beaufort that we completed in early March last year has been moved to later in the month.  So this is the only game in Town, and while Martha was not quite ready for a race, I was feeling confident and wanted to make this my first race of 2024. 

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that, according to the entry form, there was a new course, and it turned out to be an improvement over those narrow sidewalks.  There was a sharp northerly wind on Saturday morning, but it was a cloudless day and the temperature was 42 degrees, and I showed up in plenty of time to warm up.  The new course circled the Civic Center on a wide concrete Greenway along Bogue Sound and then through some parking lots, finally coming directly onto Evans Street.  It was a typical small 5-K fund-raiser, with lots of families, strollers, and friendly volunteers along the course.  

Just after the one-mile mark, I saw something I don’t think I have ever seen in a race before:  a young girl did a perfect somersault while running.  “She’s really a gymnast, not a runner!” said her Mom when I commented on it.  Shortly after that, a young woman came flying by, already having circled the traffic cone and heading for the finish line.  It was a long time before a young man came along in second place, and then one by one I watched young, fit runners (the kind I used to be) meet me before I turned and met the even slower runners stretched out behind me.  One couple passed me toward the finish and told me after the race, “You were our pace-setter!”  I told them I was glad to be able to help someone.  My Garmin watch confirmed that the course was indeed 3.10 miles, and it matched the time on the finish line clock of  40:56, faster than I had anticipated.

For a small race (about a hundred runners), the post-race food was pretty impressive – yogurt, bananas, rice-krispie treats, donuts, freshly-made waffles, and of course hot chocolate.  I was surprised when a little after 9:00 a.m., the race director came into the lobby with a clipboard and began the award ceremony; many slower runners and walkers were still on the course, I was sure.  The winner, that very fast young woman, took first place overall in an amazing time of 17:05, a pace of exactly 5:30 per mile and almost Olympic caliber.  The second overall, a young man, finished in 22 minutes and some change, more than five minutes behind her, which is very unusual.  Another young man in his teens was recognized for first place in a youth category of some kind, and then . . . that was it.  There were no more awards at all.  I asked the race director if times would be posted on-line, and he told me no, they would not, because it was only a Fun Run.  In past years, finish times had always been posted, even that year when the race director took the results home with him.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed, not so much at missing the opportunity to wear a cheap medal around my neck, or to receive with embarrassment scattered applause for an old guy completing a race, but to see how I compared to other runners close to me in age.  Martha was surprised when I returned a little before 9:30 a.m.  I noticed later when I went on-line that this was the first year results were not posted, and that the event was now being billed not as a “5-K Run” but as a “5-K Fun Run and Walk.”

Still, it was satisfying (and "Fun") to complete another race – No. 216, according to my running log – and to enjoy that simple pleasure that comes from simply running fast with other competitors, a time when I feel completely alive and present and grateful, and crossing another finish line for the first time in 2024.  We celebrated with good beer and sandwiches at Tight Lines Pub & Brewing Company in Morehead City, and later in the afternoon drove to Beaufort to see an interesting movie about African-American brewers at the Beaufort Picture Show, a tiny theater located in a storage shed next to Mill Whistle Brewery, where we sampled another good beer.  Watching a film about brewing - and running a race - can make a man thirsty!

This morning, I was glad when the alarm did not go off at 5:00 a.m. as it had on Saturday.  Instead, I awoke well-rested to the sound of a Carolina wren and a Northern cardinal outside the windows, and went out to the dune-top deck on another gorgeous morning to witness another sunrise.