This is one of the weekends we really look forward to each year where we travel to St. Augustine to tour the city and run the Bridge of Lions 5K. We decided to do a scaled down trip this year only staying one night. We made it into town Friday. After stopping off at the St. Augustine Register building for packet pickup, we checked into the Howard Johnson hotel and I headed out for my short night before race run. When I got back we had Jenny’s spaghetti for dinner. I prefer Jenny’s spaghetti over any restaurant. Instead of heading into town to walk around, we went to the movies and saw “Despicable Me” in 3D. Very funny movie, I recommend seeing. I am still unsure about the whole 3D thing. There aren’t many scenes in the movie made specifically for 3D, so I don’t really see the point as it adds nothing to the movie.

The best part about running a race in St. Augustine is staying downtown, waking up not so early, and walking to the race. The hotel is about a mile from the Castillo de San Marcos where the race started. So, we can just walk, pickup the timing chip, warmup and go. Don’t even have to worry about the porta potties!

Sailboat on the Matanzas.

Conditions for the race were hot and humid as usual. The real issue was the gnats that were all over the place st the start. Not easy swatting gnats and trying to put on the race shoes.

The first mile of this race course is awesome. The race starts at the fort, runs down the bayfront and across the Bridge of Lions. After that, you turn into the housing area on the other side for the rest of the race which can be a bit of a grind. It was a joy this year to run over the original bridge that was finished with renovations a couple months ago.

The race went really well. I finished in 18:48, 12th overall, and 2nd in my age group. I was trying to break my PR of 18:41, but didn’t quite get there. Still, my time was one minute faster than last year. I ran pretty comfortable most of the race. Outside of my first mile at 5:55, I ran even the rest of the way with a 6:04 and 6:05 with a fast finishing kick.

The shirts were great this year with a nice design showing the Bridge of Lions. The only thing they need to do to make this race better is provide better age group awards. It pays to be first overall as they get a cool $100. But for the age group awards, they used the same exact little medal that I won two years ago. They had over 500 finishers this year, if they would take just 50 cents more from each entry, they could provide some first class medals that people would really want to show off. You could tell people weren’t real happy with the medals.

Racing to the finish.

Almost there...faster, faster!!

Another good race finished!

After a two mile walk back to the hotel, we had breakfast, got cleaned up, relaxed for a bit, and checked out. We didn’t really want to go walking all over town at noon, so we went to Anastasia State Park and went to the beach.

We had lunch, drove back and parked downtown. We always enjoy going into the different art galleries and looking at what’s new. When everyone was getting pretty tired of walking, we went to Pizzalley’s to have our pizza. Pizzalley’s has the best pizza! We gorged ourselves full and ventured out for some more walking before we ended the night at Kilwin’s for ice cream.

We got a huge surprise as we were walking back to the parking garage. We saw a guy selling his paintings and it turned out to be Dean Quigley that we bought Jenny’s painting of the City Gates from four years ago. Guess he lives full time in St. Augustine now and is active in getting better laws enacted for artists to sell their work. Dean is an awesome guy and painter. Outside of painting, he is a history buff who can tell you all about just about anything. It was fun listening to the history behind the paintings he had on display. I was great seeing Dean again and we look forward to the next time we go back to St. Augustine!!

Saturday night/Sunday morning was the Kiwanis Midnight Run where I ran the 1 mile, 5K, and 10K. These races capped off the day totaling about 14 miles of racing.

If you have never run the Midnight Run before, I highly recommend doing so. This is the second year in a row we have done it. All runs start at the corner of Bayshore and Curlew Rd. in Dunedin. The race is well organized, has great awards, t-shirts and is fun!

Only one suggestion to the race organizers. The tech shirts they handed out are great but they aren’t so good running in. The shirt really holds sweat and gets heavy. Plus, it doesn’t let much air through. Maybe next race, they will order Leslie Jordan shirts. I have two and I love and run in them all the time.

For the one mile race, I paced Chris to an 8:22. He asked me to help him run 7:30, but we didn’t get there. I started him off easy and got close to 7:30, but progressively got slower. I basically used this race as a warmup for the 5K and 10K.

Ran well in the 5K. Finished with a time of 19:24. Got 1st place in my age group and finished 24th overall out of 891 finishers. My hamstrings got a little tight during the race and the bridge cost a few seconds.

After a 30 minute rest, the 10K started. I finished with a time of 42:26 and finished 3rd in my age group and 27th out of 361. This race was sort of weird. Somewhere around the 2nd mile, my body went into some sort of auto-pilot mode. My pace was even, my stride felt efficient like when I run barefoot, and my breathing was easy. I was enjoying myself as I picked off more and more runners. Unfortunately, I didn’t pick off the guy that finished 7 seconds ahead of me so I would have gotten 2nd instead of third. Oh well. It was nice running in the dark with no other light except for the candles lining the road into Honeymoon Island SP.

End of a long day, 10K finish.

1st and 3rd place plaques won at the Kiwanis Midnight Run.

Had a great time this morning running the Lutz Independence Day 5K, one mile and taking in the 4th of July parade after.

For summer time in Florida, the weather was fantastic. With the skies being cloudy and rainy the last couple days the temperature stayed relatively comfortable and the humidity wasn’t too bad. Thank goodness since the race started at 8:00.

I ended up having a great race finishing just off my PR and second fastest 5K. Finish time was 18:45, 2nd age group, and 13th overall. I went out a hair faster than I wanted but didn’t drop off too much. Splits were 5:52, 6:03, and 6:10. Seemed like there were a lot more of the faster runners there and they had a great turnout.

The kids and Jenny did the one mile. I paced Emily to an 11:44 and first place in the 9 year old female age group. Christopher got a nice trophy for first overall male.

After a Subway footlong at lunch and an afternoon nap, the legs feel really good and ready to run the one mile, 5K, and 10K at the Kiwanis Midnight Run tonight. I will be pacing Chris for the mile. He says he wants to do a 7:30, we’ll see about that. I told him I am going to start him at 6:30 and see how long it takes for him to blow up! A lot of rain around right now so it should be a lot cooler than last year. Hopefully, the rain will slow down or quit by 11:00.

Yesterday morning was the 2nd race of the Watermelon Series in Lakeland.

The weather didn’t seem quite as warm as the last race three weeks ago. Still just as wet after it was over though. seems like the keep getting more and more people participate. When Emily crossed the line, her finish card was 650 something and there were quite a few more behind her.

I had a really good race that went exactly as planned. I finished with a time of 18:57 and placed 15th overall. This is the first time I have been under 19 minutes when the temp is over 55 degrees. The time is about 30 seconds faster than 3 weeks ago and a couple places better. Results haven’t been posted yet so I don’t know age group placings. My friend Robbie showed up for this one so he kicked my butt running 17:32. So I should place 2nd for age group which doesn’t matter for the series standings as you have to run all races for final awards.

The 3rd race of the series is July 24th.

Emily finishing the first 5K we let her run by herself.

The results for race #1 of the Watermelon series is finally up on the Lakeland Runner’s Club site. Not sure what they did, but the page is so slow loading now.

Anyway, the 19:25 I put up was good enough for 1st place in the 35-39 age group. Looking forward to getting in a lot of good miles in before the next race June 26th. Maybe I will go a little faster if I feel like it.

Ahh, Summertime. Waking up before 5AM, heat, humidity, must be Watermelon Series time!! This morning was the 1st 5K of the 15th annual Lakeland Watermelon Series put on by the Lakeland Runners Club. The race is run around Lake Hollingsworth next to Florida Southern College. Temperature at start was 77 degrees with 96% humidity. I had more sweat going during my warmup than any run in the winter. They had a great turnout with over 500 people showing up. This year, they are actually giving out finisher medals to those who register for all four races by next race and complete all four.

I had a good run this morning that went as I had planned and finished knowing I could have gone faster if I wanted to. My finish time was 19:25 which is 30 seconds faster than any of my times from last year’s series. I finished 17th overall, but won’t know my age group placing until later in the week as it takes them a while to tabulate everything. I did a great job of starting out slower running the first mile in 6:19. The 2nd mile was 6:15 and last mile 6:14. I didn’t have much incentive to push the last mile, so I just kept running comfortably trying to concentrate on keeping good form and run smooth.

The watermelon after the race was cold and tasty!! One cool thing about the races in Lakeland is that they have someone who takes pictures of all the runners and posts them on the running club site. This is good for me since Jenny walks the course so I don’t have my photographer at the finish. The only thing this race needs to do which would save them a ton of time is to have age group boxes to place finisher cards into. For some reason, they have a single male and female box to collect cards. I pity the person who has to sort all those cards. Last year it took 2-3 days for results to be posted to their site and everyone had to wait for well over an hour after the final race finished for them to get final results to hand out awards.

We will be getting up bright and early tomorrow morning to go over to Lakeland for the first race in the annual Watermelon Series put on by the Lakeland Runners Club. The Watermelon is a series of four 5K races spread over two months. The cost is only $5 per race or $15 if you pay for the series up front making for great training races or for somebody wanting to do a race for the first time. Awards are handed out at the end of the series for overall and age group winners based on cumulative time from all four races. I was first in my age group last year.

My goal for the series is to not go all out and practice starting slow (about 6:10 pace for first mile) and run faster each mile after.We’ll see how that works out!

Yesterday was the May edition of the Lake Louisa 5K which is put on by the Friends of Lake Louisa to raise funds to pay for park projects.

The course is an out and back that is flat except for a small part of a hill at the turn around point. There is also several turns that you need to run correctly so you don’t end up running farther than you need to. As it was, I measured the course at 3.15 miles. This is not a big race maybe getting a little over 100 runners.  The race is enjoyable and gives a good reason to spend the weekend at Lake Louisa State Park. Race awards are nice, refreshments are adequate, but the t-shirt was the same exact shirt that was used in September (even the sponsors on the back were the same).

This was my first race after running the Kentucky Derby Marathon a month ago and my first race in the heat so I wasn’t sure what I would do. Races like this are hard because I know what the usual winning times are and this one was winnable from past times. So, I end up going out with whoever goes and have to try to stay at a pace I can do. Didn’t work out this time as the guy who won ran 17:30 or something like that. Until the turnaround point, I just wanted to keep him in sight and see if he faded. That didn’t happen. I could feel that my run mechanics weren’t that good as my calves were feeling it because I was pushing off too much. I slowed down more than I would have liked the last mile.

I ended up finishing in 19:25 finishing first in my age group and fourth overall (3rd male). The female winner passed me just near the end of the third mile. She paced while I raced. I probably could have stayed with her and the kid that I was running with the whole race, but I really didn’t feel like putting in the effort knowing marathon training starts this week and I am running the first race of the Watermelon Series in Lakeland next week.

Cool looking sunset through the rain.

Good "motion" shot by Jenny.

Chris working hard at the finish. He got schooled pretty good. Fogured out you have to train for these things to do well..But what do I know?

Lake Dixie inside Lake Louisa State Park.

Looking forward to this weekend. We will be spending the Friday and Saturday night camping at Lake Louisa State Park. Saturday morning is the Lake Louisa 5K. The Friends of Lake Louisa hold a 5K at the park in May and September each year. We ran the last one in September where I placed 2nd overall and first in my age group. Assuming past times hold up, this is a winnable race for me. If I can be smart by going out easy at a 6 minute pace, I will see how I feel at the turnaround and kick it up on the way back. Traing has gone great and race pace has felt easy over short distance intervals.

No internet at the park, so won’t have anything up until Monday. Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend!!