Photos are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Z7zTquie1GfHnVv97

BEFORE MY START: My 7th race of 2020 was Cupid’s Chase 5K, held on Feb 8 at O.P. Schnabel Park in San Antonio. This race supported organization Community Options, a nation-wide nonprofit supporting people with disabilities. This race is personal for me as I was born a birth-defect March of Dimes baby and now have spinal arthritis and hip degeneration in my older years, so I can relate to disabilities, although my disability is a lot less than some and so I am lucky that I can still remain pretty active so far. So I try to do as many races as I can that support people – especially kids – with disabilities. Race had a late start time of 10 a.m., so for a change I was able to sleep in pretty late on a race day and then go to the park with about 30 minutes to start time. Wandered around and got a few pre-start photos.

ON THE COURSE: Start was from the park’s main pavilion and the course was on the park’s paved off-road trails. I run a lot in this park and have done several past races here, so knew what to expect: an up incline from the start; then a down incline to a downhill; then flat for a bit, as we made a left turn onto an adjacent trail. A few inclines along the way but nothing you could really call a major hill. Our turn-round was just past one of the under-passes in the park and then back the way we came. Of course this meant that when we got to that longer downhill we’d come down, that was now an uphill, and then we had a long up incline until we go to the turn that took us to the finish. Once we made that last turn, it was down all the way to the finish. I ended up with a 36:06 chip time, first in my age group, 65-and-over. There were only 2 in my age group, lol.

After My Finish: Right after I finished, got a few photo of some other finishers coming in. After that, back into the pre-and-post race activity area, where I found the food and water. Relaxed a bit and then got some post-race photos.

EPILOGUE: I’ve done this event a few times in the past. It’s a smaller event, with about 115 or so finishers. Makes for a nice friendly event with lots of the participants interacting with each other; it’s like a very friendly ‘community get-together”. Really nice quality long-sleeved race tee, finisher medals, and age group awards to first place in each age group. There was also a raffle, a DJ playing music, and a variety of vendors giving away some free stuff. Also a dog-friendly event, so my pockets I carry dog biscuits in were soon emptied, lol. Definitely will do this one in the future and would recommend it to others.

MUCHO GRACIAS to all the people that made this one happen for we participants: the park police officers out there for us; all the sponsors and vendors; iRun Texas for doing the timing, course setup, results, etc; all the race volunteers