OWL-DRAGON

Chestnutwold 5K

A follow up to yesterday's post:

There is a local race director, Ron Horn of Pretzel Sports, (a wild and crazy guy if there ever was one) who often advertises races as easy medal races. These are usually small local races with a hundred participants. Well Sunday I ran a race like that. The Chestnutwold Elementary School is just around the corner from my house. The course used a route locally called the busway. I used part of this roadway when I created the Reindeer Romp course. Up through the 1960's trolleys ran up Darby Road. Much of the rail bed was used to widen the Road but a two mile stretch was preserved as a closed roadway for exclusive use of buses. This has become a valuable resource for the community and is widely used for walking, jogging and biking. It is also used by emergency vehicles who can avoid the congestion on Eagle Road.

Since there are no buses on Sundays the route is especially attractive as a race route. It is not flat but the ups are gradual and since it out and back you do get the hills back and Sunday's race finished on the downhill. (The Reindeer Romp finishes on the uphill and never fails to catch first timers by surprise who took the downhill without a care.)

Being a small race I thought there would be no age group awards but I had hung around post-race to enjoy a pancake breakfast (very nice amenity) and kibbutz with friends. Greg speculated that given that the race was mostly kids and their parents there might be awards for the old guys. Well to my surprise there were age awards one deep, and to my further surprise I got one. Turns out I was alone in my age group. Being old has some rewards.

Now next Sunday I am doing a 5K in Dowingtown at Victory Brewing (one of my favorite microbreweries - if you get Victory in your area and like hoppy beer get their HopDevil).

A quick survey of the 400 registered runners shows I am pretty much alone in the age group. One other 63 yr old runner ordered an xxl shirt so I thinking maybe he won't be much competition. I know I am dangerously close to hubris but I am feeling good and Sunday's time was almost two minutes faster than my last 5K.

Today I did a 1500 meter swim followed by whirlpool. Really seems to help recovery.