Photos are here:      https://photos.app.goo.gl/BvkvWH2Kr4gyavFCA

 Before the Start: My 57^th race of 2025 was the El Grito 5K held on Sunday, September 14 at Mission County Park in San Antonio, put on by Andiamo Race Productions.  This was my 3^rd race of the September 13 – 14 weekend, after doing the Gruene 5K in New Braunfels on Saturday morning; and then the Battle of Salado Creek 5K at Lady Bird Johnson Park on Saturday at 6:45 pm.  I got up pretty early on Sunday morning, got some breakfast and then headed down to Mission Park.  Unfortunately, even though I’ve been to this park several times, I had an old-man brain dump and took a wrong turn and ended up having to back track to get to the park. Start time for the 5K was 7:30 a.m., with me arriving just a bit past 7 a.m., so I got hustling and got my race packet, got my race bib on and still had a bit of time to get some pre-start photos.    There were 214 finishers for this event, so a pretty nice turnout.

On the course – There were some musicians there who played the National Anthem, accompanied by a young lady who did a great job of singing it. After that we all lined up behind the starting gate and got ready to go.  The course was done on the greenway paved trail in front of the park that was next to the river, so going out, we had some views of the river on our right and on our left coming back to the finish, as the course was an out-and-back.  The trail is fairly wide but to be safe, the organizers had us go across the timing mat in groups of 15 to 20 to get us started. The 5K was chip-timed so this procedure did not affect our results time, since the timing chip started after the mat was crossed. I got across the matt with about 3 minutes ‘gun-time’ showing and was off and running. The course is VERY hilly.  It does not have those crazy “Helotes Hills” or Eisenhower Park hills, but they were fairly challenging, being long up slopes and then down slopes.  We started downhill after crossing the start line; then had a very short flat part, and then we were climbing up again.  Although not super steep, these hills were pretty long in places, so we did a lot of climbing. I did my usual 8-minutes-running/2 minutes walking and took photos during my walk breaks. Considering I had done two races this weekend already, I was feeling fairly good and went along pretty well. The course was open to other users of the trail not doing the event, so we did encounter some cyclists and other walkers and runners doing their own thing. The cyclists were pretty good about giving us warnings as they came up behind us.  After doing I don’t know how many hills – 6 in all, if I remember correctly, we then got to a very flat part for about ¼ mile, with the river on our right and our turn-round was a bridge right ahead of us. This was the flattest part of the course, with some nice views of the river. After the turn-round we then of course had to climb up the downhill we had come down to get to the turn-round, and this hill was one of the longer ones on the course, taking us under a bridge and then after the bridge around a bend where the next part of the  uphill was; and so it went, lol, negotiating all these hills in reverse of the way we’d come out. I admit my legs were beginning to feel those other two 5Ks a bit, so I took a few extra walk breaks. Finally, we got go the last downhill and could see the finish line ahead of us and hear people cheering. Of course, since we had started on downhill, we now had to climb up that hill to get to the finish line. Somehow I made it u that hill nonstop, lol, and crossed the line, ending with a chip time of 45:40, averaging 14:42 per mile, good enough for 2^nd out of the 4 in my 70 – 99 males age group.  I was happy with that; I had really expected to finish closer to an hour, so this was a nice surprise.

After My Finish:  After getting some water and eating a banana and doing a cool-down walk, I then wandered around chatting with others and getting some post-race photos of happy finishers, supporters, vendors, and so forth.   As this is also a dog-friendly event, I also handed out treats to the doggies there, with permission of their humans; I usually carry dog treats in case a loose one starts chasing me and treat the friendly ones. Epilogue:  Andiamo gives out overall awards and age group awards to the first in each age group, so I didn’t expect an age group award, being 2^nd in my age group, but I still got a very nice medal, as Andiamo has some very nice finisher medals, and they are pretty large too. Their race shirts are all nicely done too and very nice quality.  They also had several post-race goodies and on-site musicians and dancers who entertained us post-race with a very nice show. Mission Park is a nice park in the San Antonio Greenway Trails system; it has very nice indoor restrooms; water fountains; 2 covered pavilions, and one of them is huge and has a stage to do presentations. There were also Park Police officers at the event for our safety, as well EMT folks which, thankfully were not needed, but nice to have them there, just in case, especially as I have a pacemaker, lol.  I will definitely do some future Andiamo events and would recommend them to others. Mucho thanks to all who made this one happen for us participants, e.g., iaapweb for the timing and results; all the many volunteers there for us doing packet pickup and other things;  all the vendors/sponsors out there too, as they help pay for all this to happen; the ‘official’ race photographers; and anyone else involved I may not have mentioned here; thank you all! May all stay happy and healthy, and may you always succeed at whatever goals you have. Stay happy, stay healthy, and stay saf