Joplin Memorial Half Marathon

This was officially the first running of the Joplin Memorial Half Marathon.  I ran the race two years ago, but it was called the Boomtown Half Marathon then.  They changed the name to honor the 161 people who fell victim to the tornado that struck the town on May 22, 2011.

 At the start of the race they held a moment of silence for 161 seconds, one second for each person lost.  During that time they released 161 balloons into the air and we all watched them float to the heavens, in silence.  It was quite moving.  Then, we raced, because life goes on.  I'm not sure if running will add any more days to my life, but I'm quite sure it has added more life to my days.

This was one of those days.

This race was also a family reunion.  Several of my family members live in the Joplin area and many others traveled to Joplin for the occasion, some from as far away as Orlando.  Shown here at the start of the 5K are my son Eric, who finished his very first 5K, woohoo!, along with my uncle David, aunt Jeanne, cousin David, his wife Lorraina and their son Austin.

My cousin Amanda joined me in the HM again.  We both ran the Bentonville HM in March.  Here we are after the race, signing the flag that the race directors are giving to the city.

The rest of the family was there to cheer the runners on.  We had T-shirts made for the occasion.











As for the race itself, I was very pleased with my performance.  Once again I set out to break 1:30.  My PR is faster than that, but this isn't a great course for a PR and the weather was a little warm to boot.  A 1:30 finish seemed like a reasonable goal, all things considered.

I started off the race very disciplined.  My first mile was exactly on pace, 6:52.  It felt hard though, not at all like how easy your race pace should feel in the early miles of a long race.  I was worried this wasn't going to be my day.  There was a pretty good wind in our faces that first mile and perhaps that explains my difficulty.  Concerned as I was after that first mile, I decided to continue on with my goal.

The next few miles felt easier and I actually got a little ahead of my goal pace.  I was glad too, because there was a 1:30 pace group and the guy leading that group was annoyingly talkative.  Perhaps what really bothered me, though, was he was running my pace and was still able to talk.  I was thankful to leave him behind and hoped I wouldn't see him again.

At the halfway point I was a good minute ahead of schedule and felt reasonably good but I knew the second half was the hardest.  The elevation drop is more than 200 feet in the first half of the loop course.  That means the second half has more than 200 feet of rise.  What goes down, must come up.

I struggled at times in those hills, but I'm a strong, experienced hill runner.  My pace slowed a little but not too bad.  I finished in 1:28:37.

This was a very satisfying result, even if it was 20 seconds slower than my PR.  I finished 12th overall out of 1245 runners.  I was in the top 1%!  Wow, that is a bit of a shock.  I was 2nd in my very competitive age group, where the third place guy would have actually won several of the younger age groups.  The old guys really brought it today.

At the top of this page is a picture of  the brick I was awarded for placing in my age group.  It was one of the bricks from the Joplin High School that was destroyed in the tornado.  How cool is that?

Old Timer's 5K

This was a race that I was definitely qualified to run.  Shelly had great fun calling me an old timer all day.

I really enjoyed returning to Southwest City.  About 30 years ago, I played on the SWC baseball team because my community, Noel, didn't field a team that summer.  I was invited to play by one of my high school friends, Eric Wolfe.  As it happens, I saw his sister Michelle and her husband Dusty at the race.  They both ran the 5K and did great.

The race started and finished right at the old baseball field where we used to play.  The course was actually pretty challenging for a 5K and that surprised me.  Looking online later I figured out why.  It included 180 feet of elevation change -- quite a bit for only 3 miles.  Looking at the course you wouldn't think there were any significant hills but I guess what looked flat was actually a long, slow, uphill grade.  Plus, there was 100% humidity.  That probably explains why standing around before the start felt fine but once we took off it felt terribly hot.  This is going to be a long summer.

I finished 2nd overall with a time of 20:07.  The winner was a 14 year old boy who finished in about 19:10. See, it wasn't solely a race of old timers!