Oskar Blues 4-Mile Race

It could not have been a better morning for the Oskar Blues 4-Mile Race at the Oskar Blues Brewery in Brevard – a sunny day, temperatures in the 60s, and a light breeze.  We have run this race twice before, in 2015 and 2016, but on a difference course.  Leaving early in the morning in our Mini Cooper, we arrived in plenty of time (the start time was 11:00 a.m.) to check out the new course - as much as we could, anyway, since part of it was on the Brevard Greenway, a nicely-paved, broad Greenway trail on which we had finished the Flight of the Vampire last October, and also on which I had run a 5-mile race in 2017.  Flatter than any of those previous races, mostly in quiet neighborhoods where dogwood and azalea were in full bloom, we were looking forward to a new course and to seeing our friends Skip and MaryAnn.

I admit that I was not in the best condition for our first race since December. We had been working hard this week, my training had dropped off, and allergies were affecting both of us, with pollen counts in the Code Orange medium-high zone.  Sometimes this can result in a surprising turnaround once the race starts, but this morning my legs felt heavy as I warmed up in the parking lot of the brewery.  Our friends showed up, and Skip decided he would run with me (although I suspect he could have finished faster than I did).  We have run together for nearly 40 years, and it was nice to run a race with him again.  We tried to recall how long it had been since that had happened.  At one time, we were closely matched – I remember beating him to the finish by mere seconds in a race in Clarkesville nearly 30 years ago, and he did the same to me in Bryson City a few years later.  And one year we ran the Rocket City Marathon together, his first and only marathon, and he never stops reminding me how imprudent it was of me to continue in such a masochistic pursuit for many years after that.  I explain in turn that all the blood descends to my legs when I begin running a marathon and my brain stops functioning at full capacity.

The race was well-attended by families, with several mother-daughter and father-son pairings and plenty of strollers and dogs, all of them to be avoided.  It is always nice to see very young children running perhaps their first race.  Skip and I ran side-by-side, chatting amiably about past races, commenting on the beautiful azaleas and the nice, flat course.  I do love to make jokes during a race! – it seems to lift everyone’s spirits, including my own, so I asked volunteers along the way if they were sure there would be beer at the finish line, I accused one woman and her baby who passed us of having a motorized stroller, and so on.  But despite the flat course, each mile split was slower than the last one, except for the final mile which was partly downhill, and we crossed the finish line together in 52:00.

Martha, on the other hand, was absolutely on fire.  She disappeared ahead of us pretty quickly and I did not see her again until the finish, when she announced that her time was 38:20.  She had told me on the drive over this morning that she hoped to break 45 minutes, so this was indeed a spectacular finish time.  Looking back, she had finished in 2015 in 41:31, and in 2016 in 39:16, so this was a 4-Mile PR for her, and she is six years older now.  There were ten-year age groups and neither Skip (who is 69, and potentially running against 60-year-olds) nor I expected to place.  But Martha found that she had taken second place in her own age group, at the age of 66; the first place woman was a mere 17 second ahead of her, and she was only 60 years old.  Very impressive!

As for me, I confess that I was a little disappointed not to place at all in my age group.  Looking back at my race records, I have not failed to place in my last 15 races over the past three years, eight of those being first place.  I had been telling Skip how much he would enjoy turning 70 in November and being in a new age group – “Runners don’t grow old, they just enter new age groups.”  Still, I was a year older and there was some stiff competition in my age group – the first place winner, who was exactly my age, finished in 33:52, nearly twenty minutes ahead of me.  We all learn pretty early in a lifetime of running races that it does not pay to have a fragile ego.  There is always someone faster than you.  But it does pay to have a sense of humor!

So it was a good day, as every day is when we complete another race, another milestone, another achievement logged in the book of our lives.  And we never fail to learn something from a race, if we are paying attention.  What did I learn today?  Humility, and gratitude, and an appreciation for the beauty of this greening and flowering time of year.  At the end of the day, I was able to watch my beautiful wife set a deserving PR, we were able to celebrate recent good news that MaryAnn had received and her birthday tomorrow, and I was able to run a race with my oldest “running buddy” Skip – and all of those blessings were reward enough.