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hot day for running
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Three circuits on the Lakefront Loop today and I feel 100% recovered from last week’s Ultra Challenge. The first two were in the early morning light rain, and the third a hot and sweaty run with my coworker Anthony during our lunch hour. We took a detour south down the Waterfront Trail (past the 79 underpass) to check out the construction work on the new pedestrian bridge over the inlet. Last I heard it should be open for use in September. No geese today, just a bunch of ducks minding their own business.
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I went over to IHS bright and early to run in a circle 30-40 times for some Sweet 16 mileage, but the gates were locked and the maintenance guy new nothing about FLRC member access. Okay, on to plan B.
The Waterfront Trail was pretty nice at 6:00 a.m. following the overnight rain. My legs were feeling it at the end of a high mileage week, and had I to save something for the Ludlowville group run. It was a nice and easy 10k to get in the mileage and break in a new pair of Xero shoes.
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Sorry about that, Pete! For reasons IHS wouldn’t explain, the track isn’t open on weekends from July through November.
Weird. I figured the employee would at least know something about it. Do you know if Cornell’s outdoor track is unlocked for public use at 6:00 a.m.?
Cornell’s track is often open, though you sometimes have look for a different door or hop low fence on the north side. But there’s no set schedule that I know of.
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June was a month full of end of year school commitments and weekends of travel soccer and I realized last week I had barely made a dent on my challenge courses! My initial plan was to join the group run at Ludlowville falls but I do need to work up my mileage and a shorter course today meant I could bring along one of my favorite running partners, my son Rahmon (R2). He is good company on a run, very chatty and observant we loved passing the dog park on a Sunday morning watching all the dogs enjoying their friends at the park too!
Headed over to Wegmans afterwards for breakfast pizza!
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today the Osprey were doing a lot of talking to each other, as the parents flew with their young ones
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Good clouds today. Also, a PGXC shirt makes any photo look better. 
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With three runs left to go, and time running short to finish the challenge, I looked for a 5k near my mom’s house outside of Boston, where I’ve been staying for the past week to help her out after a fall. As luck would have it, I found a Parkrun in Cambridge, MA, less than 5 miles from her house. The course is in Dannehy Park which boasts multiple athletic fields, a track, a playground and a dog park. Course was well laid out and folks were friendly. The run has an informal atmosphere with a simple and organized set up. They had a 2-minute first-timers orientation and there were at least 20 newcomers among the 100 participants with a few from London. Run was a bit hot for me but all was well. Highly recommend the Parkrun experience!
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A great feature of this years Challenge evolution was the “5k anywhere” inclusion. This allowed me to log some Challenge miles in my home town, with a commute about the same length as the race itself. The Krauter is actually a 5k or 20k road race in the heart of Phelps (and Clifton Springs on the 20k path) that serves as one of the many activities during our Sauerkraut Festival weekend. Before I started running, I had no awareness that this race even took place, but in 2021 I signed up for the 5k and have intention now to participate in this event annually. It is billed as the “oldest race in the finger lakes”. I haven’t bothered fact checking this, but absent gorgeous waterfalls, incredible vista’s or anything else that doesn’t seem akin to a cabbage patch, that is really its only defining feature.
I was salivating a bit on this one thinking I had an opportunity to place well. Last year there were no sub 20 minute runners in the entire field, and the door seemed to be open to defend the home court so to speak. Those delusions quickly evaporated about a half mile in when I realized that the lead group was primarily composed of a bunch of high schooler track/cross country kids whom had little regard for crusty old men such as myself that are still trying to keep up. As such I contented myself with just doing the best I could and not worrying about what was going on around me.
Although i placed considerably worse than last year, I also ran a considerably faster time than last years that is now a new PR for me. I’m taking it as a personal win and looking forward to see if I can improve again next year before the age decline finally catches up with me.
I’m hoping the 2024 challenge will find some way of including non challenge course races again.
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I’m glad to see these last two posts because there hadn’t been that much use of the remote 5K option so far, apart from FLRC races like Twilight. I’ll see what I can do next year to ensure there’s a remote 5K option again.
I can’t see how long the Krauter race has been going on, but it would have to be over 50 years old to best the Ithaca 5&10. I don’t have exact dates handy, but this year is the 48th running of the 5&10, and we missed 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
@adamengst All I could find is this link from 2018 that stated it was the 52 annual run of the Krauter.
With 2020 getting canceled, that would suggest this years was the 56th? It also specifically calls out the 20k as the oldest, so it is unclear when the 5k originated. That puts it around 1967 which aligns with the origination of the Sauerkraut Festival itself. So it seems plausible. Honestly, I’m surprised there aren’t races in the area much older. I feel like if something is the oldest of something, it should be way more older than I am, right!?
I think it is hard to know really how much of the remote 5k option has actually been used, as it puts you at the mercy of people actually posting about it to know that it wasn’t just another swing around Cass. I did the Right2Run 5k, Shark In the Park 5k (including my wife), and Twilight 5k without posting about it. When I did Segahunda 72, one of the races was called Vale of three falls 5k. I ended up not counting it for the challenge because everyone clocked it on their GPS as significantly shorter than 3.1 miles. I also ran several trail races that were in the 3 to 4 mile range, but I didn’t count any of them because they didn’t explicitly call themselves a 5k. As a thought, maybe all outside races 3.1 miles or more could count as a single 5k challenge course? That would open up more races for people to catch remotely to post about here without significantly running up the mileage.
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My family joined me for a walk on the Lakefront Loops today. Along the way we learned about catalpa trees (look for their distinctive string-bean-shaped seed pods by the inlet on the southern leg of the course). Month-old Theo slept through the whole thing.
It’s nice to have a stroller-friendly course in the Challenge!
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I agree! Like the Buffalo Turkey Trot, which started in 1896.
I did encourage everyone to post about their remote 5Ks, but there’s no requirement.
Hmm… but that might confuse things like the average times? And we wouldn’t want people submitting an unconfirmed split time.