Braveheart 5-K

The Bravehearrt 5-K has been held in Franklin in conjunction with the Annual Scottish Festival for a number of years.  It is aptly named because it is not for the faint-hearted.  “Race through the streets of Franklin, NC and feel like William Wallace (AKA Braveheart) battling the English,” says the race website.  “If you like a challenge, you will love this course.”  We do like a challenge, and this was not the first time we drove to Franklin to battle the locally famous hills. 

I think this was the nicest morning we have ever had for this race, though.  After several sweltering days (by Highlands standards), a cold front moved in Friday night and by the next morning temperatures were in the low 60s.  We arrived in plenty of time to pick up our race packet and to mingle with the bravehearted participants, which included some young men wearing blue face-paint like Mel Gibson in the 1995 movie of the same name.  Quite a few men wearing Scottish kilts were in attendance, including local bagpiper Michael Waters, as well as some of the participants in the race.  But despite the cooler temperatures, a woolen kilt would have been a wee bit warm by the top of that first hill.

It has only been a week since our last race, the Waynesville Main Street Mile, but that had only been a mile after all and most of it downhill.  I have been suffering from a little plantar fasciitis and resultant heel pain and applied the entire arsenal of remedies against it all week – ibuprofen, massage, and relentless stretching.  I felt pretty good standing at the starting line just outside the Scottish Tartans Museum after a brief warm-up, back and forth on Main Street a few times.  We watched the under-tens finish the Rob Roy Fun Run first and then lined up at the start, where a prayer was offered followed by Michael Waters playing “Scotland the Brave” on the pipes, which was very moving.  And then we were off, running slightly uphill on Main Street and then turning right on Harrison and climbing up an even steeper incline, which had already reduced some of the participants to walking.  Martha was already out of sight after the first half-mile, every bit of which was uphill.  I realized that would make for a nice fast finish since the course was out-and-back. 

The course leveled off and then turned left abruptly at the corner of the Sunset restaurant and descended the long, notorious Bidwell Street hill for almost a mile, then right on West Main for a bit, circled a traffic cone, and returned to the base of  that long hill to begin climbing.  An enthusiastic woman was just behind me most of the way, calling out encouragement even to the walkers straggling at the back of the race, “You’re doing great!  Everybody else chose to stay home this morning, but you came out here!”  We chatted a little as we ran and I looked her up after the race, when she told me that it helped her as much as the others to be so upbeat.  I try to be upbeat and crack jokes during races, too, and I have noticed the same thing.  Laughter buoys up everyone around us, and makes a difficult run so much easier to bear. 

I was determined not to stop – my only goal for this race, really – and except for a few steps to grab some water handed to me by some young boy scouts and girl scouts on Bidwell Street, I met that goal.  But that hill forced at least half the runners I saw to a walk, including one bravehearted little seven-year-old girl who had stopped and looked as if she might start to cry.  Her kilted dad turned and came to her and she hugged him.  “You’re doing great!” I told her.  “And the last half-mile is all downhill!”  She had, after all, opted to run the Braveheart with her dad, rather than the 10-and-under Fun Run which she might have won outright.  Up and up we climbed, and then finally we topped that last hill and realized it was all downhill, a cool breeze suddenly in our faces, and shady trees, and we turned east on Main Street where we could see distant mountains on the horizon and hear the sound of bagpipes at the finish.  It was there that the seven-year-old and her dad passed me.  “I knew you’d beat me!” I said, and then I saw Martha standing on Main Street applauding me.  Another finish line crossed!

After recovering a little, stretching, and downing a bottle of water handed to me by the Race Director when I crossed the finish, we enjoyed wandering around chatting with the other finishers.  It is always special to have completed a race of any distance, and especially a tough one like this, an exhilaration combined with a peaceful, calm satisfaction.  Martha had hoped to break 32 minutes and was happy with her time of 30:47, which earned her a second place trophy.  Had the age groups not been ten years, she would have taken first place.

My watch told me that I had finished in 43:37, one of my slowest 5-K times to date, but I was proud of not stopping to walk and also glad that my troublesome heel and knee felt just fine.  We waited longer than usual for the awards because apparently there were some technical issues with the timing.  Despite the timing chip on the back of my race bib, my name did not appear in the results, although I know I crossed the finish line.  No matter:  I knew that I had not placed in my ten-year age group, in which a very fit 75-year-old had taken first place in 32:16.  It did affect some of the other results, though.  The encouraging woman I had met during the race, who had definitely finished behind me, turned out to be 77 years old, yet the results had her finishing in an impossible time of  28:40 for first place, which undoubtedly took a trophy away from the real 70-79-year-olds who had beaten her.  

Because of the delay in the awards, we did not wait for the ceremony to finish.  They had started with the older age groups and were working their way backwards to the younger and the overall finishers, and so we also missed the very moving ceremony at the very end (which we had seen in previous years) in which the overall male and female finishers are presented with the beautiful, engraved William Wallace sword, kneeling (which I would not have been capable of doing), and being “knighted” by Sir Daniel Williamson of the Scottish Tartans Museum & Heritage Center, lightly and reverently touching them on each shoulder.  I have never seen a finer finish trophy and seldom seen a more moving awards ceremony.

It was a good day once again.  I realize that it is with those same words that I conclude nearly every one of these blog posts about our races.  This was race No. 205 for me, and most of the last hundred or so have been with Martha, who is maintaining a high level of performance in her mid-sixties.  Competition keeps our running focused, and going to races are events that we often turn into mini-vacations.  But even small, local races like this are worthy of celebration, and we headed back home through Walnut Creek, Norton, and Cashiers in our Mini Cooper, where we enjoyed cold beer and salmon BLTs at Whiteside Brewing, our thirst and our hunger sharpened even more this day by running Braveheartedly.