Photos are here:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/r93cPbBCBBztwFTA8

Before The Start:   On Dec 9^th, 2023, I completed by 68^th race of 2023. The SJRC Jingle Bell 5K was held in Gruene, Texas, with start and finish across from the historic Gruene Hall. Built  in 1878, Gruene Hall is the oldest  continually operating dance hall in Texas. The event supports the SJRC, an organization providing services for children and families who have experienced trauma from abuse, violence, neglect, etc. This is a very popular annual event which had 772 finishers this year.  After the 5K, there was also a kids run. I had picked up my packet the day before so, with an 8 a.m. start time, was able to sleep in a tad.  I arrived at race site around 7:20 a.m. and enjoyed my usual pre-race ritual of chatting with friends and getting a few pre-start photos.

 On the Course:   The weather was quite overcast, with a temp in the 60s and it did spit a little bit of rain on us off-and-on.  I guess Gruene got some rain the night before and in the morning, because the streets were quite wet in various areas.  The humidity was crazy. Athlete Guild was the company that set up the course and did the timing and results.  They are very good about starting right on time and today was no exception. There was a prayer given and the National Anthem was sung beautifully by some young lady singers and then we all lined up. We started in a parking lot area across from Gruene Hall, made a short loop on a couple of the roads near the parking lot, which brought us back out to Gruene Road. We passed by the start/finish line access road, passing by Gruene Hall on our right, heading north on Gruene Street, passing by some shoppes and businesses just up from Gruene Hall.  We continued on Gruene Road ending up turning into one of the residential neighborhoods. Once we were in here, the course took us through several of the residential streets, including a short out-and-back on one of the streets which had the course water station and, across from that, a musical ensemble playing for us as we passed by. We ran through the neighborhood past the music players, eventually ending up back on Gruene Road, and went back to the finish line the way we had come out.  I did my usual thing of 8 minutes running/2 minutes walking and taking  on-course photos during my walk breaks.  Just before Mile 2, three dogs in their yard were ‘barking cheers” at me, so I took a quick break and gave them treats.  I stupidly stopped my watch when I did this, so knew my time would not match the race clock, duhh; however, I was feeling pretty good, so made up the time by running the last 1.1 mile nonstop.  My watch showed a 40 minutes and change finish, the race clock showed 41 minutes, so I did make up quite a bit of the time. I ended up with a chip time finish of 41:19 chip time, 10^th in my 65-69 age group and my last mile was a negative split at 12:14, nice. The first guy in my age group finished in 24 minutes and change, so he literally was almost twice as fast as me, lol.

After My Finish:  Took a few photos of others coming in after me, then got some water and a banana and ‘refreshed’ a bit. Also, after we finished, we had sunshine and blue skies from that fickle Mother Nature who would not do that for us during the time we were on the course, lol.
I went back to my car and put on a dry shirt I had brought with me and then wandered around chatting with friends, participants, supporters, volunteers, etc., and got a few post-race photos. This is also a dog-friendly event, so I soon had a lot of new 4-legged friends, since I carry dog-treats with me when I do a race or go for a run – which is how I got the nickname Scottydog; I register for all my races as Scotty Dogg – and they were very happy to see me, lol. Some of them even tried to follow me around.

Epilogue:  This is a very good event, very nicely organized and has a very nice quality long-sleeved race shirt too. The course was also laid out nicely by Athlete Guild, with no hills at all. It is a pretty flat course, so a good course to shoot for a PR if you are one of those speedy people at the front who won’t be challenged by the normal ‘pack’ of runners like me that fill up most of the course along the way.   I have done this event several times in the past, but missed last year and the year before as I was dealing with my ongoing prostate cancer at the time. It was nice to be back this year.  Aside from the goodie bag, which included that nice shirt, a couple of jingle bells – which I did not wear, as I hear enough ringing already in my old-man head, lol – other nice things included post-race beer; sausage wraps; a variety of fresh fruits courtesy of New Braunfels Orange Theory; lots of bottled water; a bouncy castle for the kids; indoor restrooms at Gruene Hall – where race day packet pickup was – as well as an ample number of porta-potties, just in case; Santa Claus on site; a costume contest – there were quite a few people in costume – and Athlete Guild also had this nice computer where you could enter your bib number and get your results printed immediately. Lots of the sponsors also had free give-aways of various items, and there was also a holiday-themed photo backdrop. This really is one fun, enjoyable event which I will continue to do in the future and certainly would recommend to others.  Much thanks to all who made this one happen for we participants: Athlete Guild; the SJRC organizers and all their many volunteers;, all the many sponsors; the law enforcement officers out on the streets for us doing traffic control, etc; our music-and sound-guy; Gruene Hall management and staff for opening the hall up to us; and anyone else involved I may not have mentioned here.  Thank you all so very much!