Photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/D72eRQWdHRXK9TBX8

 Before the Start:  My 55^th 5K of 2024 was the Gift Of Life 5K on October 5^th at Lady Bird Johnson Park in San Antonio, Texas.  This event is put on by Transplants for Children. Its mission is to “empower children and their families to master the lifelong challenges of pediatric organ transplantation.” The start time of this event was 10 a.m., so got to sleep in a bit, as I live a very short distance from the park.  Even so, I arrived after 8 a.m. to get some good parking, and then wandered around chatting with some of the vendors, volunteers, participants, and supporters, as well as getting a few pre-start photos.  This is also a dog-friendly event, so of course I handed out treats to all the doggies I met.  Last year, this event got canceled due to major thunderstorms in the area. Mother Nature was kinder this year, giving us sunshine with some cloud cover; a temp in the mid-60’s, and a fairly nice humidity level. I enjoyed chatting with the people I encountered, including a few fellow veterans there. My friend, Chaunte, had signed up for this one also, but one of her friends came up to me and told me Chaunte had asked her to let me know she would not be there for family reasons.  Her friend found me pretty quickly, so I guess I am getting easily recognizable in the running community, lol.  The park’s pavilion area had been set up very nicely by the volunteers and staff of Transplants for Children, with a table where you could get tickets for door prizes and also a table – very moving – with in memoriam photos of those with transplants who had passed on from their various medical issues.  I also chatted with folks from iRun Texas, who did the timing and course set-up for this event.

On the course:  We started right on time. I am not sure exactly how many participants were there, walkers, runners, and dogs – maybe 100 or so – since I have not seen the posted results yet. There is a traffic circle at the park, so we started on that, doing a loop around the circle, and then went down and incline to get to the main paved trails of the park.  We made a left turn and headed in the direction of Los Patios shoppes area and the 410 frontage road. The course was out-and-back, with the turn-round being right at the 410-frontage road.  I did my usual 8-minutes run/2 minutes-walk and took photos during my walk breaks.  A lot of the time, with my slow pace, lol, I had the course all to myself at various points; also, it probably did not help my finish time that I also stopped to offer treats to all the doggies along the way I encountered; the course was open to all, so there were several non-participants doing their own thing, e.g., walking, cycling, doing their own runs, walking their dogs, etc. Per my Garmin, I ended up with a time of 43:02, and had positive splits, which is the norm for me, with my stops along the way. My chip-time results may show a little faster as, from previous races done, I found that my old-time garmin watch is about 1/10 of a mile off;  e.g., when I got to the mile marker on the course, my garmin showed 1/10 short of a mile; this happens every race I do, so my watch result is .1 slower than my chip-time result, but what the heck, I like this ‘old-fellow’ watch, it’s been with me for quite a while, through many adventures, lol. I felt pretty good the whole way and the last mile I pretty much ran non-stop, with one exception of stopping for about 30 seconds to give a treat to a walker lady coming toward me with her dog, and then I was off again.

 After My Finish:  I got a few post-run photos of some other finishers coming in and then went and got some Gatorade and water from one of the vendors and then just sat in the nice shade of the pavilion for a while, relaxing and sipping my drinks.  After that, I was up-and-around getting some after-photos of volunteers, other participants, and so forth.  There was also an announcement of the door-prize winners – none for me, darn the luck – and our music guy was rockin’ us with some very nice music, including some tunes from my old-dog era, as well as Hispanic/Tejano tunes, and more; very nicely done. Awards were also announced, given to the overall winners in each age group, if I remember correctly.

Epilogue:    This is a fairly small, but very nicely organized event for a great cause. The event was presented by County Commissioner Grant Moody, with funding from the Hartmann Family Foundation. All participants got the race shirt and race medal in their packets – as usual, I gave each of mine to a kid – and the door prize winners got some very nice items. The course was very nicely done, and Mother Nature kindly cooperated with us for the weather. I’ve done this one in the past and will continue to do it in the future. I hope it grows bigger as time goes on; it really is a very worthwhile cause and a very nicely done event. Mucho thanks to all who made this one happen for we participants, e.g., Transplants For Children staff members and volunteers; all the vendors/sponsors there for us; the Park Police officers that were there for our safety; our music and sound guy; iRun Texas; the food truck guy that wat there – who is also a transplant recipient – with a nice variety of food you could purchase; and anyone else involved not mentioned here.  Thank you all!  Hope to see you next year at this event.