July Racing - “Not so Great”!

Three years ago when I was in Eugene for the Olympic Trials I ran the Butte to Butte 5K and then joined Smitty and some friends and he cooked blueberry pancakes in the Park on the river, a tradition they have had for many years. I signed up to do the 5K again this year and again we had breakfast in the park. 

The race itself was going really well and I was on pace to run my best time of the year. Unfortunately at two miles I tripped and went down hard. While I still finished the race the fall and subsequent injuries took a lot out of me and the time didn’t come. 

Yep! I wound up going to the ER in Cottage Grove after all was said and done to get an X-ray of my elbow and get the wounds numbed so they could clean the gravel out. 😳

For my second race inJuly I drove to Mazanita, Oregon a nice beach town north of here to spend the night and run a 5K on the beach. Another small town race with a lot of tradition. This was the 39th annual. Despite still having bruises and soreness from my fall I was feeling really good. The weather was beautiful. The wind was down and we ran on the hard pack with the tide out. 

The race was an out and back past the start line to another turnaround and then back to the finish. I felt really good when the race started and felt like I would have a good time. What could go wrong? Simple! They didn’t have anyone at the turnaround and nobody knew the turn was only .55 miles out. At 1.7 miles the people I was running with said their GPS said that’s how far we’d run. Needless to say the 5K results were unofficial! 😳 

My next race I ran with my niece Brandy in Cottage Grove with an 8:00 start time. Unfortunately three different locations gave three different start times so the settled on 8:30. My first struggle was mental because of paranoia about falling again. It was getting dark, I don’t see well at night and the quality of the roads was horrible. To compound that I also felt lousy physically as soon as the gun went off. I had received a shingles shot a couple days before and afterwards I had flu like soreness. It was still fun and the free beer was good. 

Then I decided I was done racing for July until I was healed up and feeling better. Next time I’ll race will be after I turn 71. A new year. I did a total of 36 races since turning 70.