Wednesday Night Run at HARRA's Power In Motion

Given that I was in Houston this week, I e-mailed HARRA's Power In Motion co-director Jack McClintic to see if I could come out and run with one of the PIM groups. He said, "Certainly." But there was a catch -- I needed to speak for a few minutes about being a PIM alumni from the Fall of 2004.

I was more than happy to oblige. I attempted to indicate to those newer folks that the things that they learned and would gain from Power In Motion would indeed benefit them. I specifically spoke about the fact that PIM is where I was exposed to speedwork and hill training and that it was where I really began to build my "running family", if you will.

I met Jack's co-director, Tom Radosevich, for the first time this evening. (Tom's responsible for submitting Bayou City Road Runners' club report for Footprints.) We had a good conversation before the program got started. I had actually known who Tom was at least from when I flew home from the Lincoln Half Marathon last May 1st, which is where I met Steve and Paula Boone.

I also had a chance to meet Joe Oveido from the Tornados as well as fellow HARRA Board Member Sarah Troscher, who took over the Member Discount program.

Some of the many coaches and speakers tonight are friends of mine -- Andrea Chan, Joan O'Connor, Audrey Christiansen, Dr. Bob Hoekman, Tom Stilwell and Ted Traynor. Others that I recognized were Jen Brown of the Tornados and Felix Lugo of Luke's Locker. (I was really pleased that Andrea, Joan, Tom, Jack and Ted all took time to speak to Waverly. If you want me to do something for you, treat my kid nice - because she IS a good kid!)

Dr. Bob basically spoke this evening about Hydration - which is the subject of his "Running With Dr. Bob" column that will appear in the October edition of Footprints.

I told Jack that I wanted to run with one of the "I can run for three miles or more" groups, which meant Fitness, Gu or Hydration. On his list of coaches and paces, Gu had "9-10:30 minute per mile". That was me.

I should have looked at the schedule online but my 3 miles for the evening, which should have been a recovery run, turned out to be a half-mile warmup, 2 miles of Fartleks and another half-mile cooldown.

The group of 12-to-13 runners had three sub-3 hour marathoners - Tom, Jack and Ted - and Felix running with us. I started out strong and out in front for the first two sets of two light poles each. (I remembered from the 2004 Fall PIM session that this was when I really found out how fast Saara Dewalt was!)

I then quickly migrated back to the last pack of 3-to-4 runners, but by the last four to five sets of two light poles-at-a-pop that I was in front of that group most of the time.

There was actually a runner, Janet Gillespie, from my Fall 2004 PIM session. It was good to see her! (I saw her right before they asked me to speak and I couldn't remember her name!) She and her boyfriend were going to run the Aramco Houston Half Marathon this coming January.

I also saw Houston's Richard Kerr, who I know is just over 70 BUT he has done every single HEB Texas 10K Challenge race in all four years of its existence! He's taking part in Power In Motion this session.