Photos are here: (only 2, sorry) – https://photos.app.goo.gl/E6jqryqH65vpaqEo6

Before The Start:   On Sep 2, 2023 I completed my 47^th 5K of the year. The 5K for Labor Day, held in Boerne City Park, included a Kids Run, a 5K, and a 2-mile walk.  Also, my apologies for no photos for this race.  Microsoft in its infinite wisdom, updated its “photos program” – making it, in my opinion, a LOT more less user-friendly; while I was processing the photos a computer glitch zapped my program, deleting the photos from my camera and I was unable to recover them, so my apologies to the people I took photos of – and to Bentley the Dog, I had a really good photo of him.  I am not a fan of that darn Microsoft photo program and wish they would bring back the much more user-friendly Microsoft Office Photos program.  Hmmm, can I sue Microsoft for losing my photos?  😉  Just kidding. I still had my race shirt and the race medal, so I did get photos of those. Small consolation, though, I was really looking forward to sharing these photos. The gathering was a fairly small event with maybe about 50 or so people.  The timing was “old school” with clock finish timing for results. About an 8 a.m. start for the 5K and the 2-mile walk, which started after the kids run. 

 On the Course:   Boerne City Park is a really nice park just off of River Road and adjacent to the Cibolo Nature Center.  It includes both paved and off-road trails, lots of tennis courts, indoor restrooms, a pool, and soccer fields that are the home of the Boerne Soccer Club. After the kids run, the 5K and 2-miler folks gathered near the back of the tennis courts for our start. The route took us on a paved concrete trail – with virtually no shade, lol – winding around by the tennis courts and a couple of the soccer fields.  We then proceeded to the dead-end of the concrete path where we made a turn-round and came back the way we had come out, with the exception of finishing by the timing clock, not behind the tennis courts where we had started.  I’d had 2 days of rest after having a medical procedure on the Wednesday before the 5K, so I felt pretty well rested.  I did my usual 8-min-run/2-min walk, stopping to take photos during my walk break.  On one of those photo stops I was chatting with 2 ladies who had 3 lovely dogs, and stupidly put my Garmin on hold, so MY garmin-recorded finish time is about a minute better than what my clock time finish showed. As noted, I was feeling pretty good and managed to run just about the whole last mile non-stop, does not happen very often these days,  since before my recent cancer treatments; so I was pretty pleased.  41:27 on my Garmin; 42:32 clock time, so I did not lose all that much time. Because this was a fairly small event, I managed to place first in my 65-69 males age group – there were only 2 of us.

After My Finish:   Ate a banana, got some hydration – temp was in the upper 70s, so not too bad, but pretty darn humid – and ate a banana and then enjoyed chatting with other participants and their supporters.  This was quite a group of very motivating people, including a Wounded Warrior Program guy, running with his prosthetic leg and dang, he was pretty speedy too.  He told me he helped out at the San Antonio office and invited me to come visit sometime. I may just take him up on that; Disabled Vets of America and WWP are two of my personal-reason causes that I donate to whenever I can.

Epilogue:   This counts as a 5K race but felt more like a get-together of many friends out for morning exercise; very nice, friendly people, lots of camaraderie. I did this one last year and I will certainly do it again and would recommend it to others.  This event was put on by the Boerne Sunrise Rotary Club, which supports many causes in its local community, as well as the many other sponsors.  If I remember correctly, Dave Anderson was our race director and also serves as one of the officers of the Rotary Club. Mucho thanks to them all, and to everyone else involved in making this one happen for  we participants;  iaapweb which provided the timing clock; all the sponsors; all the race volunteers out there for us; the patience of other park patrons as we invaded their space at times, and all others involved I may not have mentioned here. Thank you all.