Photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/GrRJ9qWZucu8tMVW8

Before The Start: My 13^th race of 2023 was the “100 Years and Running” League of Women Voters San Antonio Area (LWVSAA) held on Sunday, March 19^th at Wheatley Heights in San Antonio, with a start time of 8:30 a.m.  This event supports the League’s ongoing voter education efforts. The event had a nice turn-out with 181 finishers.  After a cold, windy, and rainy Saturday, Mother Nature was more cooperative with this one, giving us a 43 degree temp at start time, very little wind, and we even got a bit of sunshine.  I arrived with about 40 minutes to go until start time, chatted with friends and other participants, treated some doggies to a few biscuits – this is a dog-friendly event – and got a few pre-start photos.

On The Course:  The course is an out-and-back, starting behind the bleachers of Wheatley Stadium.  The route took us through part of the parking lot, then onto a road that took us to Martin Luther King Park.  After getting to the park we did an out-and-back on the park’s off-road paved trails. The course was pretty flat, with nothing you could call a hill.  There were a couple of small inclines and the longest ‘hill” was the stadium parking lot incline we had to go up right before making the final turn that took us back to the start/finish line. I did my usual 8-min run/2-minute walk break, as did my friend Sally Rios, who was ahead of me for the whole course, except right at the start when I was a bit ahead of her, as I went over the timing mat before she did.  Sally has really made some good progress with her running.  I never did catch her on the course after she passed me shortly after the start, but I did keep her in sight for just about the whole way.  I felt pretty good the whole way; so good that I even extended my running time a bit on some of my intervals.   Right near the finish, I almost caught up to Sally, but she ‘smelled’ that finish line, lol, and found a burst of speed that left me several yards behind her.  I thought I would finish in around my usual  43 – 44 minutes but surprised myself with a finish chip-time of 41:02, the fastest I’ve been in a while; making progress!  I ended up 7^th out of 11 in my 60-69 males age group.  I was so happy for Sally, who finished first in her age group; congrats to her!

After My Finish:   First, a short cool-down walk, ate a banana, drank some water, and also enjoyed a free post-race sausage-wrap, which was really good.  After that, did my usual post-race photo-taking of some of the happy finishers and supporters and enjoyed chatting with friends, sponsors, supporters, and other participants, and handed out more treats to doggies.

Epilogue:  This is a very nice 5K, well done by the LWSVAA ladies and their volunteers. The sponsors were all great, with lots of freebie things, coupons, etc., for participants. Iaap did their usual great job of course set up, timing, and results, and there were several “official’ race photographers taking event photos which I am sure are my better, lol, than my amateur ones. Very nice quality race shirt.  I do so many 5K races  over the year – 65 completed in 2022 –  that I am running out of room for shirts, lol, so for this one I ordered a women’s small and asked the LWVSAA ladies to donate it to someone. This event has some really nice post-race goodies and really nice quality sponsors – including Natural Grocers, which provided the site for packet pickup, and a whole packet of discount coupons in the goodie bag for some of their products. C-force water provided bottled water – good stuff – and their rep at the event also kindly let me put my dry post-race stuff I changed into near her table. There was also a very nice backdrop for photo-ops; indoor restrooms instead of porta-potties, nice; and much more.  I would certainly do this event again and would recommend it to others. Much thanks to all the people who made this one happen for we participants: LWVSAA; the police officers at the road crossings for our safety; all the many volunteers; iaap for the course setup, timing, and results; our music man Paul; and, of course, all the many race sponsor; also anyone else involved I may not have mentioned here; thank you all so much!