Photos are here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Z7A4y9bVbnuuYzyV8
BEFORE MY START: My 30th race of 2021 and 2nd of this weekend was the Big Red and Barbacoa 5K held on August 22 at Comanche Park in San Antonio. Nice turn-out, with 242 finishers. Race start time at 8:30 a.m., with a Kid’s Run at 8:15 a.m. August in Texas so temp at 8:30 a.m. was already in the upper 70s and humidity was thicker than a double peanut butter sandwich. I arrived at race site with about 45 minutes until start time and roamed around chatting with friends and getting some pre-start photos.
ON THE COURSE: Out-and-back course starting from near the park’s main pavilion. The route was on the paved trails in the park just about all flat, with the exception of a couple of mild inclines that cannot really be called hills; down inclines on the way out, up inclines on the way back. Course was open to other patrons so had to watch out for cyclists – a couple of whom were pretty rude about it – and other runners and walkers. Like the 5K my friend Ralph and I did the day before, we were pretty much in the same proximity again for most of this race too, until near the end when Ralph found his ‘finish mojo’ and finished ahead of me by a good 2 minutes or so. I ended up with a chip time of 38:48, 2 minutes faster than the 5K I did the day before this one. Happy with that and my pacemaker, ‘celebrating’ its 2nd anniversary – it was implanted on Aug 22, 2019 – behaved itself nicely.
AFTER MY FINISH: Comanche Park has a really nice and large pavilion with fans placed at various spots, so a nice place to just sit and relax for a few minutes and cool down. After that, enjoyed a post-race Kiolbassa sausage, chatting with friends post-race, and getting some ‘happy finisher’ photos. I call them that because most participants seem to be smiling more after they are done than before and during the race, lol.
Epilogue: Very nicely done event at a nice venue. I personal like running at Comanche Park – a nice selection of trails, good facilities, including indoor restrooms, large pavilion, and it even has a kitchen area, and has a couple of other smaller shelters just right for packet pickups, serving post-race goodies, and more. Unique and nice quality race shirt. Goodies included barbacoa tacos, Big Red, and Kiolbassa sausage. Finisher medals to all and nicely designed medals for the age group placers. I would do this one again and would recommend it to others.
MUCHO THANKS TO: Race Director Eddie; all the volunteers at packet pickup and on race day out there for us; iRun Texas for hosting the packet pickup; park police officers that had a presence out there for us; our MC an music man who did a great job for us; iaap for the timing and results; I think iaap may also have designed the race shirts; and anyone else involved I may not have mentioned here. Thank you all!
Scottydog Reports 