No times for brakes as the race starts at the top of the hill.
The glorious weather continues to reign (not rain) throughout the busiest weekend of the year. Many runners took a break from the busiest racing day of the year to eat dinner and go out shopping. Friday seemed like Sunday. Then Saturday was almost perfect. Locals even thought it was almost too warm, while a few slender Caribbean transplants announced that anything colder than 70 degrees was too cold.
Running is a sport for the young and even more so the young at heart. Running in races has increased every year in the last decade. With the economic down turn in the last few years, runners are coming out in even greater numbers. The annual Great Pumpkin 5K was blessed with a picture perfect autumn day and brought out big time racing numbers. Waiting for the race to start, one runner asked another if she was going to race with her. “Oh no, I don’t really run. I just came out for the fun.” The reply was, “Well next year, I will run with you.” The oldest runner of the race was Larry Dickerson, 80. He was wearing a bright yellow pair of running shoes that enviously caught the eye of one of the youngsters. Dickerson always near the top of the rankings, smiled and said, “I’ll will them to you.”
Colorful costumes were on display. One runner at the front of the pack was painted like a Halloween skeleton. Further back in the pack a woman was decked out in a full Batman costume. The Oktoberfest celebration at the Reston Town Center was set for the whole weekend with the race as a centerpiece. This year the late summer rains did a number on the pumpkin crop, so we missed out on a giant pumpkin like the half ton monster at the 2009 event. Still, there was lots of smaller pumpkin, often with faces designed on them.
Julie Sapper finishes fourth overall.
Walking down Fawcett Avenue in old town Kensington towards the start of the race, two young kids were talking about the race. One said, “There must be a thousand runners here today,” “No way,” replied the older one. She was wrong and the little boy was right. The event has three parts and three different starts off the circular Carroll Place. At 7:45 a.m. close to five hundred 2 mile walkers and runners headed south around the circle. At 8:30 a.m., the main event 8K bolted from the south side of the Noyes Library toward Connecticut Avenue. They would cross the finish line for the first time at just less than a half mile. Three minutes after they got under way, the 1K fun run charged after them from the north side of the library.