Darke County---Clayton Murphy 5k

I drove for an hour and forty minutes northwest on Saturday morning, April 14, to run the Clayton Murphy 5k, in the tiny village of New Madison, Ohio in the very rural Darke County. As I sit this afternoon in my kitchen, I am thinking that this is about as far as I will drive in one day for one of these races in this project. Fortunately the race started at 9 am so at least I didn't have to get up much earlier than usual.

Had some misgivings about going up there because my knee is not feeling wonderful and the weather forecast was for rain. But I figured if I didn't go to this one, at a reasonable hour in a county I could somewhat easily drive to (thus low-hanging fruit, in other words), than I might as well give up on the entire project.

Ok, Darke County, what I remember from the Wikipedia entry: only about 52,000 people in entire county (that's about what my town in New Jersey had when I was growing up). Most famous person from there/born there was Annie Oakley. New Madison has fewer than 900 residents. The most famous people from there are Clayton Murphy and some race car driver I never heard of before.

But I have heard of Clayton Murphy. He won a bronze medal in the Olympic 800 meter race in 2016. Prior to that, he ran for the University of Akron and made the World Championship team in the 800 when Nick Symmonds skipped the race over a dispute with USATF about wearing sponsor logo attire outside of the competition. After the Olympics, Murphy left school and turned pro. He started training with the Nike Oregon Project/Alberto Salazar, and since then, things have not gone so well for him. he tried to pull off the 800/1500 meter double at the USA  trials last year, and ended up injured so he didn't make it to Worlds. And his results since then have not been so hot, either. Did he compete at the US Indoor Trials this year? I can't remember but I know he didn't make the team.

I had a Saturday morning free and I thought I could drive up to this race and cross Darke County off the list.

Last year was apparently the first year for this race. There was only one woman in my age group last year, and it took her almost an hour to finish, so the chance of an age group award looked good, especially since they said they were going three deep. Hardware is always a bonus. The web site had a list of registered runners, which I checked Friday night, and there were two other women besides myself in my age group this year, but only 42 people preregistered. With the predicted bad weather, they weren't likely to get many more.

I left my house around 6:30 am and arrived at the Tri-Village High School (staging area for the race) a little after 8 am. It weirded me out a little to drive up to what was for me this strange, new place. I passed through Eaton, where I have been several times for a dog show, and I still had miles and miles of driving to do.

It was raining off and on during the drive up there, and I had time to go through various emotional states. When I left my house, I was feeling great. My knee was not bothering me, and I was excited about getting started on this project. While I was driving through familiar territory, I was thinking about how much I love racing, and how a little, local 5k race is one of my favorite things in the world to do. But then when the rain started and especially after I left behind the places I knew, I began to feel completely differently about it, thinking about how stupid the whole idea was, and how miserable it was going to be to run in the rain with a bunch of strangers.

I found the school, and after a bit of circling around, figured out how to get into the parking lot. I was not the first one to arrive, and I had the impression that there were many potential age group competitors, all looking much fitter than me.

The race started and finished on the high school track, and the packet pickup was in the concession area. It appeared that they had special gifts for the people who had done the race last year, as if they were going to establish some sort of  a "streakers" program. I got my packet, which was a yellow reusable grocery bag with a nice water bottle and some flyers for local businesses inside. We had timing chips to attach to our shoes, but no race bibs. I went back to the concession area to double check on this, because I have never done a race before where we didn't get a race bib. I'm not sure if this is really high-tech or what. If your electronic timing system fails, don't you want your runners wearing bibs to help you with your backup plans? But for fifty people maybe it is not such a big deal!

The rain had let up a little, and I was hoping it would hold off at least until I was almost done with the race. It was a little chillier than I expected, what with the rain and the wind, so I was glad I had brought along a long-sleeved technical top. I didn't take a selfie, but for the record, I was wearing black capris with green trim, a technical top from the Eugene Marathon (with the Tracktown USA logo on the back), and my water repellant hat from the Delaware Marathon. To this I now added a long sleeved tee from the Ashenfelter 8k.

I debated doing a warmup, and finally decided that it wasn't raining that hard, and I was bored, and it wouldn't hurt to feel out the knee situation. So I jogged a little bit around the parking lot and in front of the school on the sidewalk. I did not see anybody else doing a warmup. I felt silly but there I was. The pavement was a little slippery because of the rain, and I cursed the damn Nike shoes, which have many great qualities but traction on slippery pavement is not among them.

Some official race announcer/director dude thanked everyone for coming, and explained that Clayton could not be there this year because he was busy training for some important spring races. Well, I don't know about that. It's a non-championship year, so there's just the USAs and Diamond Leagues coming up this summer, and based on how Clayton's winter went, things haven't been looking so good. So hopefully he is actually busy training and gets it figured out. I don't know why he couldn't take a weekend to travel home to visit family and friends and appear at this race that is run in his honor at a school where they have named the track after him. But I don't know his personal situation, and maybe a trip home is not desirable to him. Still, it occurs to me that there are other professional runners who do give more freely of their time.

I guess I am inclined to think somewhat negatively and skeptically about Clayton Murphy, since he has joined the somewhat suspicious Nike Oregon Project, with the cloud that lingers over Alberto Salazar and the athletes who train with him. Hopefully they don't someday have to rename this track because Clayton Murphy gets busted for doping. Time will tell.

I overheard a young woman discussing the course with her family and friends. They asked her what time she was going to finish in and she said around 30 minutes, so I decided to line up right behind her. I would like to think that I could be faster than that but with the knee in such rough shape it was't advisable to try. And honestly I haven't gone faster than that in many months.

So I lined up in the middle of the "pack" (if you can call 50 people a pack) and told that woman and her friend that they looked like they knew where they were going so I was just going to follow them. She said the course was pretty straightforward, just out the gate and through the town and then an out and back on a long stretch of road. But it disturbed me some that people weren't wearing bibs, because how can you tell who is in the race and who is just out for a run if they aren't wearing a bib?

It took me a few seconds to cross the start line, and soon we were in fact off the track and onto the street. I wondered how long I was going to need my long-sleeved shirt, but for the moment I was glad to have it on. I was hanging just behind the two young women from the start line. I thought they were a bit overdressed. The other woman, not the one I had talked to, was wearing a fleece vest over a long-sleeved shirt. As we moved down the road, I was having more trouble keeping up with them, and I wondered if I was going out too fast.

I hit the first mile in around 9 minutes (more like 8:55 to the mile marker) and somewhere in here I actually passed these women for the first time. I took a little walking break up one of the hills, and they passed me back, but they were slowing down. I took my shirt off, which felt good. It had started bothering me around the half mile point but I didn't want to stop to remove it until I was taking a walk break.

I started seeing runners on their way back, and wondered how they could really be the race leaders, since none of them were moving especially fast. In fact, nobody in this race broke 20 minutes! This may have overall been the slowest race field I have ever participated in. It's weird, because this could be a reasonably fast course. There were some little rollers but also plenty of flat. No shade though, so it would be tough on a hot day from that standpoint. But that was not an issue on this day.

The woman's leader appeared to be a little girl. Generally I start counting the women who go by on an out and back course to see how many are ahead of me but I didnt bother this time.

There was a water table at the halfway turnaround, and I grabbed a cup even though I didn't really need it because of the rain. Mostly it was just an excuse for me to take a little break. Now we were running into the wind, which was sort of miserable, especially as it started gradually raining harder.

Mile 2 was a 9:42. I was slowing down, and perhaps I had gone out too fast at the beginning. But so had the two women who had been right in front of me, and at some point I left them behind for good. The road back to the school was hillier than I remembered from the way out. Funny how that happens. Mile 3 was a 9:44, and I almost missed the gate to turn back on to the track, but a guy who was running along side me pointed it out in time.

I had to push to break 30 minutes, but my final time was 29:48. I started to get cold almost as soon as I crossed the finish line, so I put my long sleeved top back on, and headed to my car to get my bag with dry clothes. When I walked back up to the start/finish area, I noticed a video screen scrolling the results, and discovered that I had finished as 4th overall woman, and won my age group. So I decided I might as well stay around for the awards.

I changed into dry clothes in the bathroom and headed back outside. Nice clean bathrooms, BTW, and no lines at this tiny race, so kudos for that!People were all huddled together under a couple of pop-up tents. I had my umbrella, so I hung around outside. Some people were eating bananas and orange slices, but I couldn't figure out where to get them, and the people I tried to ask about it just ignored me. So I ate the Picky Bar I had packed and drank from my water bottle. Overall I felt like the people at this event were not especially friendly, but perhaps it was because it was such a small race and I was there as a true outsider.

Finally they began to announce the awards, and they gave out medals to the top three overall men and women. Then they said that since there were so few runners, everybody would get a medal, so just stop by the concession area and pick one up before you leave. So that was a little anti-climactic, but at least it meant I didn't have to sit through a long awards ceremony to get my bling. If I had run just a teensy bit faster, I actually could have beaten the woman who was third overall, but that's okay. Whatever.

The drive home seemed longer than the drive there! Maybe because it was raining harder much of the way. My knee doesn't feel so great a day later, but I guess I'm glad I did this little race and got started on the project. I wonder how much longer this event will continue. It has the potential to be a more popular event, although the staging area is not set up to accommodate a huge crowd, so they might have to adjust things if they drew more people. But it was reasonably well organized, and as small town races go, I would recommend it.

Hamilton County

While I eagerly await my first official race of this project, I am going to write some memories of previous races in the eight counties I'e already run in.

I live in Hamilton County, so it has to be first up. My intention as I go forward is to learn a little bit about each county and write a little bit about it here, and I almost forgot that i should really do this for the counties where I've already run, too. I basically almost forgot about Hamilton County. I never really think about Hamilton County.

So I Googled it, and if you don't want to bother reading the Wikipedia entry, here are some basics: we are in the Southwest corner of Ohio. Cincinnati, where I live, is the county seat. The county was settled in 1788, and the Shawnee was the Indian tribe that was pushed out so we could all move in. Today the county is majority white and middle class, but maybe 25 percent black. We have traditionally leaned Republican but in recent years that has been shifting, and in the last three Presidential elections we went for the Democrat. Yes, twice for Obama and then for Hillary. We are considered one of the most influential, bellwether counties in the nation in Presidential elections, and it is not uncommon for candidates to visit within a few miles of my home, or even closer. Obama came to the park that is next to my house in 2008, and I walked up the hill with my daughter to see him.

So today, we have a Democratic urban core surrounded by very Republican suburbs. We are still one of the most conservative regions in the Midwest.

Geographically, we are in the Ohio River Valley, a region of gentle hills. Although I do not think of the hills in my neighborhood as especially gentle!

The Wikipedia entry does not mention anything about our industry. Cincinnati started with pork processing, and now we are known for Procter & Gamble and GE Aircraft Engines, I suppose. North of the city used to be farmland but now we have the aforementioned suburbs, miles and miles of bedroom communities and shopping plazas.

Running-wise, we are pretty blessed. We have several very competent race directors, and on any given weekend for much of the year you have a variety of events to choose from. For the past twenty years, this has included the Flying Pig Marathon in early May, which has grown to include a full weekend of shorter races and fun runs.

Our races are downtown, in local parks and on hiking trails, through neighborhoods both urban and suburban, in industrial parks, and even in a cemetery.

Bob Roncker's Running Spot was one of the first specialty running shoe stores in the country at the dawn of the first running boom, and it is still in business today under the Jack Rabbit banner. The Running Spot has been joined by a couple of Fleet Feets and a few other local chains and small stores. So I'm always kind of amazed when I travel somewhere that has just one, or even no, specialty running shoe stores. Kind of spoiled that way. Honestly it's a pretty great place to be a runner.

So I guess that's why I've lived here for over thirty years now. It has pretty much everything I personally need in a place to call. home. The only thing I miss from my youth in NJ is the ocean, and it wasn't like I went there everyday anyway.

My First Two Races

I used to write little (or not so little) "race reports" and post them on the chat group I used to belong to, but I don't actually even have records of my two earliest races, which I completed in my early thirties, in the beginning of the 1990s, not too long after i got into running.

The two first ones, and I don't fully recall right now which came first, were a 2-mile Valentine's Day race that used to happen in downtown Cincinnati, and a 5k cross country race in a local park that was a corporate challenge team event.

I'd have to go look at my running logs to see all the details of these races and I'm wondering if I was really keeping a detailed log back then.

Valentine's Labor of Love

The Valentine's Day race started and finished at a bar that has since been torn down, but back in the day it was a popular watering hole for young people. You were supposed to sign up in pairs and they took your combined times and had awards for fastest couple, actually married couple, senior couple, things like that. Tommy joined me. We were in no way competitive. The race was organized by our local runner's club. The course was fairly flat down by the river. I think I was overdressed. It was back in the day when they still handed out popsicle sticks for placement, or maybe it was the little pieces of cardboard and you had to write your time and age group on it and drop it in a box. And that's about all I remember.

The Corporate Challenge

The Corporate Challenge stands out a little more vividly. I think it was in the spring, and I was on a team for the mid-sized company that I worked for. The event was a benefit for the American Diabetes Association, which I felt some affinity for since my dad was diabetic. The race was held in Sharon Woods Park. They had separate heats, I seem to recall, for men and women, and maybe for seniors, too. I ran as hard as I could. I remember running across a parking lot at the end of the first mile, and an uphill section through the woods in the middle. I found the terrain challenging, especially the grassy field at the end when I was tired. I almost threw up at the finish, something that still happens when I really give it my all. I felt like I was going to die at the end, and then almost immediately was ready to enter another race as soon as possible. My finish time was 25:45, which would remain my PR for several years afterward. I think my team placed third among the mid-sized companies.

And I guess that will do it as initial memories of my races in Hamilton County. They were my first two races, after all. I had no idea where it would lead me to at the time. I learned that I really liked these types of events, and that I had a bit of competitive fire, even if I lacked the talent to back it up. But the great thing about running is there is almost always somebody to compete with, even if you are only competing with yourself and your previous efforts. Not to mention the whole Age Group thing, which gives you a new way to measure yourself every five years.

Putting some races on the calendar

I've entered my first race in a county that I've never run in before. In fact, I think it is a county I have never been in, although perhaps I drove through it on the way to Indiana at one time. Not sure.

The county is Darke, which is due north of where I live in Cincinnati. The race is a little 5k on Saturday morning, April 14, The Clayton Murphy 5k, in New Madison. The race is named in honor of Clayton Murphy, a young man from that area who earned the bronze medal in the 2016 Olympic 800 meter race. As an avid track fan, I've been following his career for a couple of years, so this race sounds a little more interesting to me than the average 5k. it will be an hour and a half one way trip to get there, so it had better be a little more interesting than usual!

I will do some research on what Darke County is known for (I suspect it is agriculture) and write more about this after I do the race. There doesn't seem to be a marathon currently in Darke County, so it's worth the drive to do this 5k on a day i have free.

I have a couple of other races I'm looking at as longer term goals in September. The Akron Marathon (Summit County) is on a Saturday at the end of September. That will give me a marathon to train towards. As it turns out, there is a little 5k (Believe in Dreams), in the neighboring Portage County on the Sunday after the marathon. Since these counties are in northern Ohio and will require an overnight stay, I figure it makes sense to do them back to back. Assuming I don't totally destroy myself in the marathon I should be able to walk or jog through a 5k the next morning. And, I already checked, it doesn't look like there's a marathon in Portage so I'm safe there.

Rather than stay in downtown Akron at one of the race hotels, I've found a less expensive Red Roof Inn out in the suburbs. I will earn points that I can use for dog shows at less than half the price of the race hotels. It's true that there is shuttle to the marathon to and from the race hotels, but there should be plenty of parking in downtown Akron (they say there is free parking all day in all the lots and garages) so I think this will work out.

It is starting to become apparent, however, that in running the counties I am going to see less of the actual counties than I did of the states I travelled to on the 50 state quest. Because I don't think I am going to be able to justify hanging around these places and touristing, especially for some of the races that are just a day trip there and back.

x

What this is about

A week ago, I finished the long time goal of completing a marathon in all 50 states, at the Bataan Memorial Death March in White Sands, New Mexico. This little project or quest took me the better part of twenty years, but I was not really fully prepared for how finishing it would leave me a little sad. Although I am a member of the Marathon Maniacs and the 50 States Club, I'm not really one of those marathoners who racks up the races weekend after weekend or completes the 50 state circuit multiple times. I never planned to go around more than once.

And yet, even before last Sunday, I had been thinking about what I would do next. Some ideas I had were:

Start doing ultra-marathons. The problem is I have barely been able to make myself train for the marathons, so the prospect of trying to do even longer training runs was not appealing to me.

Focus on trail running. And while I do live next to a park where I can go for training runs, trail running takes longer than road running and I'm not particularly good at it. The roughness of the terrain and my general clumsiness increases the risk of injury.

Do some marathons in other countries. I would like to run Dublin, maybe something in Germany, something in Italy, Stockholm, and something in France.

Just continue doing all the small local races I love, with a destination marathon thrown in once in awhile.

None of these seemed like quite the right plan. And then one day a few months ago I read an article somewhere about a guy who was running a race in every county in his state. This was intriguing to me. I got out a map of Ohio and counted. Eighty-eight counties, wow, I had no idea. I'm originally from New Jersey, and I think I recall from some elementary school class that there are far fewer counties there. And that's the last time I paid attention to state county demarcation lines.

Eighty-eight is a big number. I put the idea of running them aside while I focused on finishing Bataan. But as soon as I got home, I knew I needed to have a new goal on the horizon, however far off it might be.

So I'm doing it. All 88. And I'm blogging about it. Which frankly will be the harder part for me.

Actually, the first thing I figured out when I started looking at the map is that I only have 80 counties left. I've already done eight! It's still going to take a few years. I am guessing that maybe I can knock out 10-15 a year. I'm not going to race or travel to races every weekend, after all. This is not my only hobby!

A web site I am finding helpful as I begin this project is Running in the USA. You can search on races by state and it lists what counties they are in. Almost as if they know that is what a person is trying to do, run one in every county! Actually, it comes as no surprise to me that other people have already done this quest. Here's an example. But at least it isn't something thousands of people of done already, like the 50 states. It's a little more obscure and quirky, like me.

As a side project to this, I'm going to try to run every Ohio marathon somewhere along the way. There are something like 23 or 24 of these depending on how you count them, and races come and go all the time, so that will be something of a moving target, but I'll do my best. I've already done five of them.

What will be a little tricky is, as I select races, to avoid running a shorter distance race in a county where I will have to go back some time to run a marathon. So if I am going to travel to a new county for a race that is not a marathon, I have to first make sure that there is not a marathon in that county. Right now it looks like there are 12 counties that I haven't yet raced in that have marathons scheduled.