Photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/eppqsYqVy33jLD7b9
Before the Start My 83rd and final race of 2025 was the e-Dragon New Year’s Eve 5K on December 31st, put on by e-Dragon Productions, with a start time of 6 p.m. The event was held at Pearsall Park in San Antonio on one of its paved concrete trails. My wife, Gail, also did this one also, coming in separate vehicles because she had a meeting to attend post-race, and also she knows I hang around quite a while after a race to get photos and chat with friends. We arrived just after 4:30 p.m., parking in one of the upper parking lots of the park, then had to walk down the sidewalk of a long hill, adjacent to the street, to the start/finish area to get our race packets; then go back up the hill to get back to our vehicles; and then back down the hill to get back to the race site. Is sure made for a nice pre-race warmup, lol. With all the New Year’s Eve activities going on around town, this one had a pretty nice turn-out, with 262 finishers for the event. I took a few pre-start photos before the start.
On the course: We started right on time. The course was out-and-back. Just about everyone had some kind of headlamp or other type of lighting fixture to be seen, and some of those lightings – various costumes and so forth – were quite imaginative. The first part of the course, for about ½ mile was fairly flat, and then we began going up-and-down on hills of varying sizes. I carried my old-time Canon push-button camera with me and took only a couple of on-course photos, which did not come out too well in the night, even with my flash on, so finally just packed that in and just did the course. I did my usual 8-minutes-running/2-minutes walking thing, cheering people on as I went along A little before the turn-round, I just kept on running and pretty much ran non-stop back to the finish, for the most part. Surprisingly, I ended up first in my 70-99 males age group, probably because there were only 2 in my age group. My chip time was 42:10.
After My Finish: I stood a little back from the finish line and got a few photos of others coming in. I also got a photo of Gail finishing her walk with a chip-time of 50:52. I took a photo of her finishing but it did not come out very well, since she was still wearing her headlamp, so it was flash against flash. We then got a post-race photo together, which did come out very nicely. After that, she headed back home for a church meeting and I wandered here-and-there taking photos and chatting with other participants, my friends from iaap that did the timing, friend Erik of e-Dragon, and more. I was one of the last participants to leave, so walked alone back up that long hill to my car. It was actually pretty nice because by the time I left, there were fireworks lighting up the sky. Pearsall Park is so high up on Old Pearsall Park Road that when you stand on the top hill, you can see aircraft parked on JBSA Lackland and you can get a very distant view of some of the taller buildings in San Antonio. I drove home the way I’d come out – back down Military Highway to got to US 90 and go home – and then when I got near the entrance gate of JBSA Lackland, I got stuck for a while at the entrance gate as there was a whole lot of traffic entering the base through that gate; apparently there was some kind of New Year’s Eve function gong on, and when the traffic light changed, some of them were stuck right in the middle of the road while making the turn; so I had to wait a bit before I finally got a space to get through and go on my way. Always an adventure with me, as my wife sometimes says, lol.
Epilogue: This is a really nicely done event with a good course -not too many long hills – only one really steep one that we went up-and-down, with the others being more ‘gently rolling’ – and several flatter parts of the course, and the last ½ mile to the finish was pretty flat. Lots of people were also wearing some very ‘entertaining’ outfits/costumes. This is also a dog-friendly event – and the course is adequate for strollers too, which a few people had on the course – so, as usual with me having a pocket-full of dog treats, I handed out some treats to the dogs, and was popular with them, lol.
Mucho thanks to all who made this one happen for us participants: e-Dragon Productions for putting this on; our MC, and my friend, Anthony Zamora, who did his usual great job; he is MC for quite a few events over the year; my friends with iaap who did the timing and results; all the race day volunteers there for us; any sponsors who may have provided support; and anyone else involved; thank you all!
Whatever your personal exercise passion is, may you always be successful and may you always stay healthy enough to keep on doing it. Maybe you will see me at a future event sometime; if so, give me a shout-out and we can chat and maybe even get a photo tother, if you are so inclined. I have one more event to do this year, a 5K at Ladybird Johnson Park on December 27th. Happy and safe holidays to you all.
Scottydog Reports 