Summer of Runnin'

Summer is a time for rest and relaxation. For me, the summer of 2007 was a summer of runnin' and racin'. In early June, I decided to see if I could compete in at least one road race per week for the entire summer -- from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

This crazy quest began at the Bare Bones 5K in Salisbury on Memorial Day weekend and ended this morning at the Cancer Services Labor Day 5K in Gastonia. During the 15 weekends, beginning May 26 and ending Sept. 3, I ran 19 total races in three states, in 14 North Carolina cities, in 12 North Carolina counties. The races included one mile run, 13 5Ks, one 8K, two 10Ks, one marathon and one sprint triathlon, and at some point during the streak, I set a new personal best in each distance.

I may have taken this challenge a bit too far because in some weeks, running more than one race in a single week and, on one occasion, more than one race in a single day. Early on during the streak, I ran two night-day double-headers -- traveling for a nighttime race on a Friday then returning for a morning race on Saturday. I did this during back-to-back weeks in June. Once during the streak (June 30), I ran a true double-header -- a 10K in Greensboro in the morning and a 5K in the small town of Oakboro that evening.

The streak nearly came to an end about halfway through. I had trouble finding a race during the weekend of Aug. 3, and I seriously considered not running in the Beat the Heat 5K in Winston-Salem on July 21. At the last minute, I decided to go do the race, and the following week I found a race for the weekend of Aug. 3 -- the Draper Mile in Blacksburg, Va.

In thinking back over the streak, each race brings back special memories, but the one that stands out the most is this morning's Cancer Services 5K in Gastonia -- and not just because it was the last race in the streak. At this morning's run, I got to share the experience with my longtime friend Eric, who was competing in this first race of any distance. I think it's safe to say the race exceeded his expectations.

When Eric kicked in the afterburners in the final stretch of the race, a spectator yelled, "Look at him go!" Eric cruised to a strong time of 26:42 in his first 5K. I think he caught the racing bug this morning so look out for him in the future.

As for me, I can say I've definitely become a race junkie. I don't know what kind of quirky challenge I'll come up with next. It will be weird not doing a race next weekend. After all, I already have races planned for the 15th, 23rd and 30th of September. And then the Chicago Marathon is the following week on Oct. 7. I might just have to find a race next weekend to keep the streak going just a bit longer.

Following is a summary of the races completed in the "Summer of Runnin'"

• Sat., May 26, Bare Bones 5K, Salisbury, N.C., 21:32 (New 5K PR, Placed 2nd in age group)
  
• Sat., June 2, Sunburst Marathon, South Bend, Ind., 3:54:46 (New marathon PR)
  
• Sat., June 9, Race for the Cure 5K, Raleigh, N.C., 25:26
• Fri., June 15, Tour de Kale 5K Night Run, Denton, N.C., 23:57
• Sat., June 16, St. Francis of Assisi Run for Peace 5K, Raleigh, N.C., 24:55
• Fri., June 22, China Grove 5K Main Street Challenge, China Grove, N.C., 22:49
• Sat., June 23, Law Enforcement 5K Torch Run for Special Olympics, Selma, N.C., 22:27 (Placed 1st in age group)
  
• Sat., June 30, Freedom Run 10K, Greensboro, N.C., 53:23
• Sat., June 30, Freedom Run 5K, Oakboro, N.C., 22:28 (Placed 3rd in age group)
  
• Wed., July 4, Kernersville Rotary July 4 5K, Kernersville, N.C., 23:08
  
• Sat., July 7, 2007, Tri-Span 10K, Wilmington, N.C., 50:53 (New PR in 10K)
  
• Sat., July 14, Paul Hale Memorial 5K Run, Raleigh, N.C., 24:20
  
• Sat., July 21, Beat the Heat 5K, Winston-Salem, N.C., 23:14
  
• Sat., July 28, Mission Man Triathlon, Burlington, N.C., 1:41:13 (Swim: 15:01; T1: 2:40; Bike: 57:43; T2: :48; Run: 25:02) New PR in Sprint Triathlon
  
• Fri., Aug. 3, The Draper Mile, Blacksburg, Va., 5:58
  
• Sat., Aug. 11, Hoppin' Fun Superhero Run 5K, Greensboro, N.C., 24:48
  
• Sat., Aug. 18, Ramble Trail 8K, Troy, N.C., 39:09 (First trail race, PR in 8K, placed 2nd in age group)
  
• Sat., Aug. 25, Run with Lions 5K, Oxford, N.C., 23:01 (Placed 2nd in age group)
  
• Mon., Sept. 3, Cancer Services Labor Day 5K, Gastonia, N.C., 26:45
  

Ramble Trail 8K Race Report

Prior to the start of this morning's Ramble Trail 8K in Troy, N.C., race director Tim Long offered a few words of advice for the trail running novices like myself. "Road runners be sure to pick your feet up a bit more than you're accustomed to, or you might fall."

This being my first trail race, I heeded Long's advice...but still fell. Hard. It could have been worse, however. After stumbling and losing my balance earlier, I nearly face planted in some gravel before catching myself. That would have been bad.

After thinking, 'OK. That's my close call with the fall," it happened about a half mile later and about halfway into the race -- I fell on a stretch of uneven, rocky and rooted terrain. I suffered a nasty gash on my palm, some scrapes on my knees, a swollen right knee and a bruised ego. After all, why did I have to fall while running alongside Sara Neumann, an attractive young lady from Charlotte who had befriended with some words of encouragement just before the fall? Oh well. Nothing hurt but my pride.

I'm proud to say, however, that despite the fall, I brushed myself off, pulled myself back together and rambled to the finish with a personal best 8K time of 39 minutes, 9 seconds, good enough for seventh overall and second in my age group. Following the race, a fellow runner who must have witnessed "the fall" approached me and said, "Good recovery." Those words pretty much summed the race up. As the ancient Chinese proverb says, "Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get up."

Complete Results: 2007 Ramble Trail 8K

The Longest Mile

Driving four hours and 233.5 miles one way is a long way to go just to run a mile. But that's exactly what I did on Friday when I made the trip from Raleigh, N.C., to Blacksburg, Va. for the 26th annual Draper Mile road race.

Crazy? Probably so, but having run at least one road race per weekend since Memorial Day, I needed to find a race to keep my streak alive. There were a couple races closer by on Saturday, but obligations during the day would prevent me from running those. The Draper Mile was only other option I found.

I set out for Blacksburg around 7 a.m. and arrived just before 11 a.m. for the 6:40 p.m. race. So what did I do all the time before the race? The Draper Mile is actually part of the annual Steppin' Out arts and crafts street festival held every summer in downtown Blacksburg. So I spent the day checking out the vendors, listening to some music by area musicians and strolling around the campus of Virginia Tech.

While visiting the town and campus, I could not help but think back to the tragic events that took place there just four months before. I had the sense that the community, while trying to move forward, is still healing from the tragedy, and that an event like the Steppin' Out festival aided in that process by bringing people from the community together.

That reflective, yet forward-looking attitude was on display in the message "We are Virginia Tech" or "We are the Hokies: We Will Prevail" that appeared on signs, in storefronts and on T-shirts throughout the town. During the festival, the Lyric, downtown Blacksburg restored, 1930s era movie theater, showed a slideshow of the events of April 16, 2007.

On campus, a memorial to the 32 victims who died in the shootings that day is still present on the campus Drillfield in front of the main administrative building, just a short distance from Norris Hall, where the incident occurred. Thirty-two stones -- each marked with the name of a victim -- were arranged in a semi-circle. Flowers, Virginia Tech flags and other items left for the victims rested among the stones. A placard among the memorial indicated the university administration's plans to erect a permanent memorial to the victims on campus in the near future.

After seeing the memorial and reflecting on the tragedy, running was, in a way, therapeutic. How blessed I am to experience life when these lives were tragically cut short. How blessed I am with the ability to run when there are many who can't. I decided just before the start of the Draper Mile to run the race all out and treat it as a time trial of sorts. I could push it hard for a mile, I told myself.

Aided, no doubt, by a downhill course, I posted my fastest ever recorded mile time, finishing in just under six minutes with a time of 5 minutes, 58 seconds. Then I made the trip back to Raleigh.

Eight hours and more than 467 miles was a long way to travel for a 5 minute, 58 second run of just one mile, but it was worth every minute.

Crazy Eights

I've been rolling up the miles in June, both on foot and in the car, as I've criss-crossed the state participating in various road races. Starting with the Sunburst Marathon in South Bend, Ind., on June 2, and ending this evening with my second race of the day in Oakboro, N.C., I've completed eight, count 'em eight, running events this month. I've become a race junkie!

By scouring running calendars on the Internet and getting creative with my schedule, I was able to run at least one race on each of the five weekends in June. The past three weekends have included multiple races with a pair of Friday night/Saturday morning race doubleheaders and today's double-dip with a morning 10K and evening 5K. Along the way I've met some friendly people in the running fraternity in quaint North Carolina towns like Denton, China Grove and Oakboro.

Eight races in a single month may seem a bit extreme, but with two races already on the schedule this coming week, it looks like I'm going to continue to feed this addiction in July.

Following is a summary of my "Crazy Eight" races in June

• Sat., June 2, Sunburst Marathon, South Bend, Ind., 3:54:46
• Sat., June 9, Race for the Cure 5K, Raleigh, N.C., 25:26
• Fri., June 15, Tour de Kale 5K Night Run, Denton, N.C., 23:57
• Sat., June 16, St. Francis of Assisi Run for Peace 5K, Raleigh, N.C., 24:55
• Fri., June 22, China Grove 5K Main Street Challenge, China Grove, N.C., 22:49
• Sat., June 23, Law Enforcement 5K Torch Run for Special Olympics, Selma, N.C., 22:27
• Sat., June 30, Freedom Run 10K, Greensboro, N.C., 53:23
• Sat., June 30, Freedom Run 5K, Oakboro, N.C., 22:28

Sunburst Marathon Race Report

Outlined against a sunny, blue June sky, a marathoner ran again. In dramatic lore, his name is Phidippides. This is only his alias. His real name is Austin. He formed the crest of a South Bend cyclone which swept through the streets of that Indiana city on Saturday morning with 500 other runners to set a new personal best at the 2007 Sunburst Marathon.

OK, so it wasn't that dramatic, but venturing to what is arguably the epicenter of college football history for my sixth marathon, I couldn't help but channel my inner Grantland Rice in recounting my experience at the Sunburst race. It was Rice who penned what is considered the most famous piece of sportswriting prose (and the source of my parody above) when he dubbed the Notre Dame backfield quartet of Harry Stuhldreher, Jim Crowrey, Don Miller and Elmer Layden as "The Four Horsemen" in his account of the Fighting Irish's 13-7 victory over Army on Oct. 18, 1924.

But in the land where the legends of Fighting Irish figures like the Horsemen, Knute Rockne, George Gipp, Paul Hornung, Ara Parseghian, Tim Brown, Lou Holtz, and yes, even "Rudy" Ruettiger grow larger each autumn, and in the shadows of famous Notre Dame landmarks such as the Golden Dome, "Touchdown Jesus" and Notre Dame Stadium, I added my own memorable moment by setting a new personal marathon best in the Sunburst race, finishing in 3 hours, 54 minutes, and 46 seconds.

The race is more than a marathon. In fact, it's a town-wide running festival with a marathon, half marathon, 10K run, 5K run and 5K walk. Although there were only 525 runners in the marathon, the race was a nice break from the mega-marathons I've participated in that draw tens of thousands of runners. The entire event from the packet pick-up to the conclusion had a festive atmosphere. There weren't a lot of spectators lining the course but the ones who were out, as well as the volunteers staffing the water and aid stations were very enthusiastic.

The Sunburst Marathon is billed as a route from "the Hall of Fame to Notre Dame." The race started on the street in front of the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown South Bend, Indiana, traveled through several neighborhoods, in some of the local parks, on portions of the greenway trail and along the town's river walk before a climactic finish on the 50-yard-line inside Notre Dame stadium.

The marathon got under way at 6 a.m. and based on my early mile splits, I thought I might shatter my pervious marathon best. I consistently registered mile times under 8 minutes, 30 seconds for the first half of the race, crossing the halfway point in 1 hour, 49 minutes -- which would have been a new personal half marathon best.

As the sun rose in the morning sky, however, so did the temperature, the humidity and my mile times. By mile 19, my split times were up to more than 9 minutes per mile. They were more than 10 minutes by mile 22, and more than 11 minutes by mile 25. My legs were throbbing, but I kept plodding along, putting one foot in front of the other.

I passed the 26-mile marker with Touchdown Jesus looking down and entered the stadium for the final stretch run to the finish. With the Notre Dame Victory March fight song emanating from some loudspeakers, I felt like Rudy or one of the other members of the Fighting Irish sprinting from the locker room to the field on game day. With each step the darkness of the tunnel gave way to the sunlight shining down on the field in the expansive stadium.

Running up the far sideline, I counted down, well up actually, the distance to the finish.

He's at the 10...the 20...the 30...the 40...the 50....TOUCHDOWN AUSTIN!

Crossing the finish line actually did feel as if I'd scored a touchdown, so I struck my best Heisman Trophy pose right there at midfield.

With my official time of 3:54:46, I eclipsed my previous marathon best of 3 hours, 58, minutes, 11 seconds, by 3 minutes, 25 seconds. I placed 154th out of 525 overall, 127th out of 374 among all the male competitors and 20th out of 46 in my age group of 30-34 year old males. With the finish, Indiana became the sixth state to get checked off my list to run a marathon in all 50 states.

I guess you could say, I ran this one for the Gipper.

Race of Grace Race Report

I hadn't heard of the Race of Grace 5K until my friend Steve Worley called me late last week and asked me if I were planning on running it. Despite coming off a 17-mile marathon training run on Saturday, I figured what the heck, and decided to run this afternoon's Race of Grace, sponsored by Edenton Street United Methodist Church.

I met up with Steve and Brad Broyles, another local runner I met through Steve, before the race. The out-and-back 3.1-mile course started on West Edenton Street in downtown Raleigh, merged with Hillsborough Street, which took us in front of NC State University for the turnaround before heading back to the church. Various bands lined the course providing a mix of encouraging praise and worship music, making this 5K reminiscent of some of the musical marathons I've done in the past. I particularly enjoyed the group that played the handbell rendition of title theme from the movie Chariots of Fire theme. (I'd be surprised if you've never heard this theme since it's now parodied in just about anything related to running, but just in case you haven't, here's a sample audio clip.

It was a beautiful spring day for a run, but with temperatures hovering near 80 degrees, it was a bit warmer weather than I like to run in. Since I was coming off the long training run on Saturday, I hadn't planned on running for speed, but the race atmosphere got the best of me. Although I didn't anticipate doing so, I finished with a personal-best 5K time of 22 minutes, 39 seconds, eclipsing my previous 5K best of 23:09 that I set on Jan. 1 of this year by 30 seconds. Steve finished just over 25 seconds, and Brad -- who ran Saturday's Country Music Marathon in Nashville, Tenn., then flew back to Raleigh in time to run the Race of Grace -- finished in 31 minutes.

The Race of Grace is a well-organized event, plus the crowd support and entertainment provided by the bands before and during the race gives it the feel of a bigger event. Plus, it's for a good cause with the proceeds going to urban ministries and other groups that address social issues such as homelessness, healthcare and hunger. Although this year was only the fourth running of the event, someone said it's quietly become one of the larger races in Raleigh. Judging by the turnout today, I believe it. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before this year, but it's a race I'll definitely try to add to my race calendar in the future.

Barely Made It

This morning I saw a note on the Cool Running Web site that indicated the 2007 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon, scheduled for October, had already reached 40,000 entrants. Since Chicago was one of the key races I had circled on the calendar for 2007, I stopped procrastinating and signed up. It's a good thing I did because by 2:47 p.m. this afternoon the race had reached it's capacity of 45,000 entrants. Looks like I was one of the last one's in.

Confirmed: Cary Road Race Was Indeed Short

A message on the results page for this past weekend's 5K and 10K events as part of the Cary Road Race confirmed what the runners thought afterwards -- the course was indeed short. The following note was published along with the results.

"Timer's Note: According to Neville Wood, the state certifier and the man who measured the Cary Road Race courses, the runners in both races ran a short course. Neville should know since he ran both races."

Cary Road Race Report

Of all the road races I've particpated in since taking up running five years ago, I had never competed in an event at the 10K (6.2 mile) distance. And apparently, even after running this morning's Cary Road Race I still haven't participated in a 10K.

Although the advertised distance for the race was 10K, the buzz among just about all the runners I talked to afterwards was that the course was short, perhaps by as much as a half mile or more. That's surprising since this was, after all, the 29th annual running of this event.

I knew something was amiss while tracking my mile splits on the course. My split at mile two read 6 minutes, 47 minutes. I've never sniffed a sub 7-minute mile in my life. The best mile split I've ever run in a race was 7:15, but according to my finishing time of 45 minutes, 6 seconds this morning's, ahem, 10K, I averaged 7:15 minutes per mile for the race. No way that happened.

My friend Steve Worley, who I ran with for a bit, said his finishing time was seven minutes faster than his personal 10K best. We talked to three guys who ran with Garmin Forerunner watches and each of their GPS trackers registered different distances for the course. One read 5.7 miles, another 5.8 and the the third 6.1 miles. Still short by any measure. Another guy we spoke with said a race official told him that the course was indeed short, but didn't say by how much.

Since the course was a double loop, I'm guessing the distance error was somewhere between mile one and two, which was a turnaround point on the course. Perhaps course officials didn't mark the turnaround point far enough out. I'm pretty certain this is where the course was short because this is where my megafast mile occured. My second time through my split at this point was even faster than the first -- 5 minutes, 58 seconds. There's just no way I ran a sub 7-minute mile much less a sub-6! All my other mile splits seemed pretty accurate based on my running history, pace and ability.

Despite the apparent inaccuracies on the course, I still had a good time at the Cary Road Race, and that's the main thing. The distance error won't keep me from doing the race again next year, when hopefully the 10K really is a 10K. In the meantime, however, I still need to find me a real 10K to run.