Photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WQMNwCAWGdVHcFMW6
Before the Start: My 51st 5K of 2024 was the Real Life 5K on Thursday, September 19th. Starting and finishing at River City Community Church in San Antonio, Texas. Put on by University Health, this 5k provided a certified course, starting and finishing on the grounds of the church. The course also included participants getting to do a route on the grounds of Retama Park the San Antonio horse racing venue. This was a smaller event with 47 finishers at the ‘live’ event. There was also a virtual option. Race start time was 6:45 pm, so it was fairly warm, with a temp in the low 90s, but Mother Nature was kind; we had a lot of cloud cover and a pretty good wind blowing, so it actually felt a bit cooler than what the actual temperature showed. I arrived with about 45 minutes to go until start time and got a few pre-start photos.
On the course: We started right on time. The course had us line up on a slight down incline on the sidewalk are near the church’s Real Life Pavilion. We crossed over the timing mat and made a right turn. This took us on a curving course in the direction of Lookout Road. I did a “Clairol” run/walk – nice’n’easy – doing my 8 minutes running, 2 minutes walking routine. Given what the heat was like, I also took a few extra shorter walk breaks. As slow as I run, I pretty much did most of the course without anyone close to me, which was okay. We passed by a water station right before getting to Lookout Road. Once at Lookout Road, police officers were there to give us a safe crossing, and this took us onto the grounds of Retama Park. We got to the 1-Mile mark after turning onto one of the park’s back access roads. This road took us past horse stables on our right. Once past those, we went onto a small paved road that took us onto a dirt-and-grass area and began a loop on this. The loop took us past Retama Park’s main stadium area and also by these ‘lookout’ towers along the way. I am not that familiar with horse-racing, so not sure what they are for; safety reasons, maybe; or maybe for observing and reporting on the race? This long loop took us around this fenced in area that had a pond in the middle of it, and then back onto the side we had started on. We then headed back for the road where the stables were, passing the Mile 2 marker as we exited this pasture. At this point, Mother Nature decided she had given us enough break and so for the last mile back, the darn sun was in full blast as we went past the stables, gaack. We then went back to the finish in reverse of the way we had come out. Thankfully, after we re-crossed Lookout Road, there were lots of trees and shade and a housing area to our left with some tall homes, so the sun was pretty much blocked out for this last half-mile, which felt better I ended up finishing with a slow chip-time of 47:25, doing positive splits, which meant I had behaved myself and just did this one very easily like I had planned. I could have crawled, lol, and still placed as there were only two in my 70-74 males age group. My speedy friend and excellent running friend Jim was the other in my age group and he finished in 25 minutes and change, good grief.
After My Finish: One of the University Health people greeted me at the finish – wow, did I look that bad, lol – and kindly gave me a bottle of water and a small bag of ice which I put on the back of my neck and sat down and just relaxed for a few minutes. After that, I went over to my car and sat in there with the a/c on full blast for about 5 minutes and that cooled me down quite nicely; then it was back to the pavilion area to chat with participants and supporters, get some after-photos and also get my 2nd place age group award.
Epilogue: This was a fairly smaller event, but very nicely done; lots of good things, including live music from DJ Paul; our MC, Anthony did his usual great job; Pushbutton photography was there doing their normal great job of getting the official event photos; and post-race goodies included a variety of snacks and some Kiolbassa sausage wraps. Participants got a very nice finisher medal; and the age group awards were miniature horseshoes. I donated my race shirt so did not get one, but from what I saw of others that had them, very nice quality. All-in-all, a very nicely done event, even with the warmth we experienced. I would do this one again – hopefully in a cooler month next year, lol – and would recommend it to others. Mucho thanks to all who made this one happen for we participants, e.g. iaap web for course set up, timing, etc.; our sound man Paul and our MC Anthony; Pushbutton Photography; all the many volunteers out there for us; the folks of both University Health and River City Community Church that were out there for us; all the many volunteers; the police officers and firefighters/EMT folks at the street crossing; and anyone else involved I may not have mentioned here; thank you all! P.S. – indoor restrooms too….LOTS of them…no waiting.
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