Photos are here:      https://photos.app.goo.gl/3WnfEzdJw18roJmE7

Before The Start:   Followed up my first 5K of the year – La Cruda 5K on New Year’s Day in San Antonio – with this “lower-key” 5K.  This event was put on by BestRaces.com on January 6, with the location being Lady Bird Johnson Park.  The event offered a half marathon, 10K, and 5K. Unlike most races, for this one you signed up online and then received an email to fill out a form, selecting the time you wanted to start, with the start time options being 7:30 a.m; 8:30 a.m; and  9:30 a.m.  I live only 3 miles from the park, so selected 8:30 a.m. to sleep in a bit before going.   The race shirt is mailed to you before race day. After you finish your selected distance, you then send another email, verifying your finish, and your finisher medal is then mailed to you. There is no chip timing, but if you request to be timed by them, they go “old school” and will start their timer when you start – basically gun time – and give your results when you finish. I just went ahead and timed myself with my Garmin.  I arrived about 8: 15 a.m, got my bib, and took a few pre-start photos before I started. 

 On the Course:  Unlike most events, for this one you just started at your selected “wave time” and went onto the course. The start was at the top of the trailhead in Lady Bird Johnson Park. The course is all on the park’s paved trail.  There was no big crowd of participants lining up for the start, like most 5Ks. For this one, we did a 2-lap course, going from the trailhead to a turnround point; then back to the trailhead; and repeat. For those of you who know the park, the turnround point was just before the short downhill that takes you across the bridge in the park and then toward the Los Patios shoppes area.  Because of the various times people were starting, I was mostly running alone, but there were other participants out there doing their thing too, so there were times when I was running with a few of them, and I did do my usual run/walk thing and take photos along the way.  I did goof around a bit with this one, lol, just taking it easy and having fun, taking a few extra photo stops, resulting in 15-minutes-and-change miles for miles 1 and 2; and then a 13:20 pace for the last 1.1 miles, ending up with a finish time of  43:46.

After My Finish:  I chatted with the two very nice company ladies that were out there for us; and told them I have done several races at this park, so when they do this next year, instead of out-and-back for the 5K, I advised they might want to just take us all the way to Los Patios and turn around there at the frontage road to come back and that would result in not having to do 2 laps.  I described to them the usual 5K course at this park – going around the traffic circle and then onto the trails and so forth, then after coming off the trail, back around the traffic circle to finish up. They said they would let their managers know that this probably would be a better course; nice; glad to help.

Epilogue:   After my finish I got a few more photos and also chatted with some other participants there, including a very nice lady I had first met at the Head For the Cure 5K; like me she is a cancer survivor, but hers was brain cancer, which is amazing, the survival rate for this one is not all that great. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met.  I am so happy for her that she is doing well; it was great to see her out there.  She was with two friends, one who had a photo of me from a previous race we both did, cool, so they all definitely knew who I was, lol. We chatted for a while post-race and I probably bored them to tears with some of my running and military life stories, but they were patient about it, lol.  So, as you can see, not your typical type of 5K event;  would I do this one again?  I would. It actually turned out to be a really enjoyable, laid-back type of event, more like a group of friends getting together and having a fun little outing.  I am not sure how many total participants they had since the starts were all staggered, but people kept showing up as I was doing my course-selected time.  It’s also dog-friendly too.  That probably didn’t help with my results time, lol, as I kept stopping to hand out treats to all the doggies I met.  What the heck, I enjoyed it.  I was also thinking about local running groups like Wolfpack Running, Speed Burro, Village Idiots, Team RWB and so forth, e.g. that if there was no organized race on the day this is held, it might be a good meetup event for the clubs.  This event was not crowded at all, so there was plenty of parking at the LBJ  park’s parking lot.  Of course, they still only have that one darn park porta-potty – I never understood why the San Antonio Parks service never built an actual restroom building in this park – so that might be an issue for a larger meetup, although there are restrooms up near the skate rink.  Even so, it’s something to think about.  Anyway, mucho thanks to the company ladies out there for us, they handled everything very well; and thanks to all the people I interacted with, both runners and walkers; we are a friendly lot, are we not?   Hope to see you at a future event sometime!