Just Ran Gainesville's Season of Hope 15K

For the third time...after 2018 and 2019...I ran the Season of Hope 15K charity race here in Gainesville, on the Hawthorne Trail just southeast of town.  Anticipating parking issues because of past swells of participants, I got there early for an easy spot and then took a little nap in my car.  I shouldn't have bothered because this event has sadly contracted and looked little like it did in the past.  Most of the runners chose the 5K option that runs concurrent with my 15K, but even with them the number was markedly down.  The fact that Tyler's Hope...which raises money to fight dystonia, a neurological disease, held this event in direct competition with another race across town to raise money for the Humane Society didn't help matters any.  There were 51 finishers for the 5K and 13, me among them, for the 15K (9.3 miles).  The temperature was in the low sixties at race's 9 AM start and creeped upward for its duration, while humidity dipped from the nineties to the seventies...pretty uncomfortable and different from my Tom Walker Half-Marathon experience on the same stretch of course last month.  The Hawthorne Trail seems flat...until you try running down it for any appreciable length, that is. But I've been up and down it so many times over the last few years that I've come to expect its annoying hills and long up-slopes.  My strategy for the race was simple: do the Jeff Galloway method of alternating running with walking, in my case 5-minute runs alternating with 45-55 seconds of fast walking.  It worked to perfection, with my finishing time at 1 hour 33 minutes 2 seconds and a 6th place finish out of 13. For the race results click HERE. Although this event was downsized from previous versions, there was plenty of hospitality from the volunteers and donors...someone even cooked up pancakes and sausage for the finishers!  I hope the good people at Tyler's Hope aren't discouraged by the lower turnout and will continue this fine tradition of December racing in Gainesville.  I did, however, feel that they could have promoted it more this year and schedule it earlier than they did...