Race Weekend

It was a pretty good weekend for my races. Even though I didn't have a lot of time for training, my time spent in the gym has served me well. I finished second overall in the two mile race walk and first in my age division in the bicycle race. It's not that I'm a stud, it's more like a big fish in a little pond.

Race walking is not real popular around here. There's a very active and competitive running scene but most of the walks are just for exercise and fun. Not that that's such a bad thing, mind you. Anything to get people up on their feet and active is a plus. There's a 5K run/walk in two weeks and I'm going to race walk that one as well. I need to work on my form a little bit. I think I could shave some time off with a little bit of work. It would be nice to have a little coaching from someone who knows what's going on but I don't want to get too serious about this anyway. At my age I'm never going to be a world beater but the racewalking is a little easier on the knees than running.

The bicycle race was lots of fun. It's part of a little festival and the people are very nice and professional who run the thing. It started exactly on time and they had the course patrolled real well. I faded a little at the end of the race but was pleased with my performance. I finished about 45 seconds in front of one of the boxers from the gym who came along on his really nice new Trek. He's just starting to get in shape and only had a few miles of bicycling under his belt prior to the race, so he did a real fine job. If he continues to train at the gym, I look for big things out of him next year at the Gloves. We both got spanked by the spandex crowd, which was expected, but the real surprise was the guy who came home in second place. I think the guy was 66 years old and finished about 20 seconds behind the winner. The guy was standing in front of me when they were handing out the medals, and I never would have pegged him as a bicycle racer, especially a really fast one. Chalk one up for the old guys!

Now it's back to finishing up some more projects before the start of my 34th year of teaching begins.