Running Wild Locally

I’ve been keeping in shape at the gym and run our “loop” around the block. I had my mind on a few races that were coming up. With no real goal in mind, I decided that I should sign up for these.

I’ve been missing my main running partner, so my motivation wasn’t as high as it usually is, but I felt it would be a good reason to keep in shape.

Fight for Air

We started off with the Fight for Air half marathon. This was a race around the Damonte Ranch area. I ran this last year, so I knew the course, but apparently I forgot about it. We showed up a bit early, and my goal was to average an 8 minute mile overall.

Erin, Sean, and Ashley were going to run the race, and we also saw Rachel there which was nice since she was leaving to see Mark in Australia the next day The race itself goes around the Damonte Ranch area, and it was more of a mental race than anything else. There’s probably only one area around the wetlands where I found that it was a pretty area to be. Other than this, the race terrain is pretty plain and not too interesting. However, the race itself was drastically more improved from last year: better run and better organized.

Overall, I finished:

I wasn’t a second better or more off on my goal. That’s pretty funny. It is, however, pretty sad when you finish in your second best time and still finish fifth of the seven people in my age group. Damn it.

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Journal Jog

The Journal Jog is probably the most famous and oldest run in Reno. It’s only a five mile run, but I can still remember as a kid, my dad would run it. Even in high school and college, he said he’d pay for my registration to run it.

Initially I was going to shoot for the 8 minute mile again, but I figured I wanted to push it and see what the Boston Marathon qualifying mile time would be. This per minute mile is …

When we were picking up the packet for the race, I also found a large picture of Ron Zarate, who had won the race in the 1970’s. Ron had coached me in all-stars when I was 13. He was a really positive person, and had a great energy around him. He also started working with my dad a year or two before he retired at the National Guard. So both my dad and I knew him.

I recently found out a few months ago that he had passed away this year. And I didn’t realize he was such a great runner until seeing his picture there. It was nice to see his face again despite hearing about his death.

The race was held on a Sunday. So… the night before, Bridget and I spent our time drinking wine at the NSET fund raiser. This gave me a small excuse to only have a few beers at the wine tasting.

The race went well. However, in the middle of the race, I kept thinking to myself why I was running. But, I pushed on. And I was really happy with the end result.

I finished at:

This was 8th in my age group, which I was extremely happy about. And I even finished in the top 100 (99 to be exact!) overall. I think that’s good, but who knows.

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Last Run?

With that all being said, I felt a little burnt out of running. So I took this week off, and now have been talking Ron, Rob, and Jason to run the Fall Colors half in the Tahoe area in late October. This will most likely be the last run until next year. And then hopefully I’ll get my partner in crime back in action.