Kicking to the finish line
It really is about the journey.
But Running Shorts has reached its destination, too, and that is the finish line.
This is the final post for this brand. And it’s arriving in email inboxes and online at 1:32 p.m., which is 15 years to the minute that the first Running Shorts post arrived for the News & Record’s site.
Thank you for telling me your running story, for reading, for checking out the Race Days calendar, for sharing a link and for subscribing. Thank you.
But most of all, thank you for being a friend and for welcoming me into your special world. There’s not been one day that I haven’t felt appreciated by you.
In the earlier announcement, I wrote that I’d stayed true to making the blog about you. In closing, I might divert from that just slightly with this list that will follow, although I think we love, or have loved, so many of these same things about running in the Triad.
• We’re all moving forward. We were born in different places, have different beliefs and run for different reasons. But we’re all moving forward – together.
• The Mistletoe in Winston-Salem. I’m already signed up for No. 21.
• Our triathletes. From my first Ironman World Championship athlete interview, with Susan Varga, to my last one, featuring Mary Kate Choat, Sarah Budd, Jordan McAmmond, Susan Laney and Cary Maycock, ALL of you have my respect. I always told sports journalism teammates that the best athletes in the Triad weren’t the ones who attracted scholarships with 4.4 speed or three-point shooting. The triathletes, and particularly the Ironman finishers, are the Triad’s best athletes.
• Also on that topic, a shoutout to David Daggett, who is among the Triad's very best athletes and is the area's favorite race announcer.
• Off ‘N Running and Fleet Feet Sports. AKA “The Store.”
• Run The Boro. Thad McLaurin’s field trips for runners every May and June help us experience Greensboro in new ways and make new running friends. Thad, keep fightin' the fight!
• Junction 311 Endurance Sports. Trivium Racing. Jones Racing Company. Thank y’all!
• The 5000 Mile Run Club. Trivium’s Libby and Rich Swor turned a great idea during the early months of COVID in 2020 into a continuous relay world record for 48 runners, including their embedded journalist.
• The 100 miles of trails and greenways in Greensboro. But most especially, the Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway, our Main Street, and the continuing evolution of the community-connecting Downtown Greenway, an Action Greensboro project led by Dabney Sanders.
• Our Man Paul Chelimo. He and fellow Kenyan Paul Katam helped boost Coach Linh Nguyen’s UNCG track and field team – a program with no physical track. Chelimo and Katam earned NCAA runner-up finishes at the 2013 championships. Chelimo won a silver medal in the 2016 Olympic Games and then a bronze in the 2021 Olympic Games in the 5,000 meters.
• The Fun Fourth Festival’s Freedom Run 10K, the longest-running race in the Triad.
• Salem Lake. Even that dam hill.
• The Beerun.
• Charlie Brown and his decades-long development of athletes with the Greensboro Pacesetters.
• The Camel City Elite Races in Winston-Salem. Put on at JDL Fast Track by Craig Longhurst and David Shannon, the meet gave track and field fans a chance to see and rub shoulders with a number of the sport’s best. Among them:
Ashton Eaton, the former world record-holder in the decathlon
Athing Mu, world and Olympic gold medalist
Jenny Simpson, Clayton Murphy, Leo Manzano, Matthew Centrowitz and Paul Chelimo, all Olympic medalists
Shannon Rowbury, a world medalist and Olympian
Craig Engels, a former U.S. champion from Winston-Salem and The People’s Choice
Ajeé Wilson and Raevyn Rogers, world indoor gold medalists
David Oliver, a world champion hurdler
Brianna Rollins-McNeal, Nia Ali and Kristi Castlin, who won gold, silver and bronze in the 100-meter hurdles at the 2016 Olympics
Edward Cheserek, a 17-time NCAA champion and Skechers Performance pro runner
Nick Symmonds, a world silver medalist at 800 meters
Lolo Jones, an Olympian in Summer and Winter Games
• Saturday morning long runs from The Store, the Blue Line and with RunnerDude’s Fitness.
• The Blue Ridge Relay with two vans full of sweaty, smelly running friends.
• John Robinson, the former editor of the News & Record, asked us to develop blogs about topics we were passionate about. That led to the birth of Running Shorts in 2009. John has told me recently that, at the time, he didn't see an audience for running content but that Running Shorts turned into a "powerhouse." Thank you, readers, and thank you, John!
• GO FAR, founded by Robin Lindsay in 2003; being led forward by executive director Lydia Hughes, program director Carolina Vazquez and development director Ruthan May; and powered by the teachers and other adults who volunteer to lead clubs and help students develop a love for running. And in my final disclosure for the sake of journalism ethics: I am a board member!
• The Creekside parkrun 5K in Archdale.
• Our running clubs, particularly the Twin City Track Club and Greensboro Running Club, plus Brandon Hudgins’ High Point Athletic Club and the Buffalo Creek Running Company.
• Brewery run groups. Name two things that go together better than running and beer.
• The Ultimate Runner.
• Sydney McLaughlin, whom we’ll see in the Paris Olympics, competing in the scholastic outdoor track and field championships on A&T’s track in 2016 and, after having competed at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, again in 2017.
• Volunteers, the unsung heroes of our many road and trail races.
• Dot Sowerby and Dick Rosen, Running Royalty, and all of our most experienced runners. You continue to inspire us with every step you take, every mile you run.
• The rise of the N.C. A&T track and field program, culminating in a third-place finish for the men and fourth-place finish for the women at the NCAA outdoor championships in June 2021.
• The Indoor Insanity Marathon. Eighty-five laps inside JDL Fast Track. Two top-15 finishes!
• Watching Rich Swor, Steve Cowie and Stevven Anderson chase Paul Chelimo during Chelimo's 20x400 workout, one of his last in the city, on the Greensboro Day School track.
• The Downtown Dashers. Woo hoo, Naomi!
• The $5K Series.
• The Cannonball Marathon, Greensboro's oldest. And you'll never guess whose half marathon PR also came in the Cannonball.
• Dr. Bert Fields, and all of the other professionals, for putting us back together.
• The Running of the Lights. A Tanglewood Park tradition, started by Jones Racing Company and being carried forward by Trivium, as the Triad’s first race of every year, beginning as the clock strikes midnight to start a new year.
• The Running of the Balls. A Sunset Hills tradition, started by Jonathan Smith.
• The Running Shorts Speed Saison of 2017 – thank you, Mark Gibb, Gibb's Hundred Brewing Co. and Junction 311 – and the Running Shorts Show podcast, which made a fun, 30-episode run in 2018.
• Shalane Flanagan coming to The Store with her Carolina teammate, Elyse Kopecky, to promote and sell their first book, "Run Fast. Eat Slow,"in October 2016. Flanagan, a four-time Olympic participant and a silver medalist in the 10,000 meters, would win the New York City Marathon a year later.
• The photographers who capture our glory, including Gina and Craig Spinale, Robert Hill, Jeff Sides, Hugo Magalhães, and Cary Hahn.
• With much gratitude, being selected as a recipient of the Will Caviness Award.
• The Beat the Heat 5K, a midsummer classic in which the elite race serves as North Carolina’s state championship.
• Taco Bros Food Truck at Oden Brewing on Tuesday nights.
• Des Linden running in the Twin City Track Club’s Frosty Fifty 25K and sharing bourbon with us later. "The course is fantastic," she said that day. "Great community. Anytime you get in the running community, it's just really great people. Fun. Energetic. Good time."
• The Pickle.
• The Greensboro Beer Mile. And practicing for it on the streets of Green Valley.
• Henderson Road, from Friendly Avenue to the dam.
• Deena Kastor, then the U.S. record-holder in the marathon, visiting The Store in November 2015.
• Keira D’Amato, a former U.S. record-holder in the marathon, joining the Twin City Track Club’s sterling list of Winter Seminar speakers in a visit to Winston-Salem in February.
• Racing on Thanksgiving Day. You can find races in Winston-Salem, High Point, Greensboro and Burlington.
• Nautical twilight. In the morning, of course.
• Interviewing Triad runners who were born in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico, Germany, England, the Netherlands, Russia, South Africa, India, Kenya and Puerto Rico.
• Crazy Running, founded by Robyn McElwee and Donnie Cowart and now owned by Cowart with his wife, Jessica.
• Northwood Street in Greensboro for hill repeats. It’s 70 feet up and 0.2 mile from Latham Road to Grayland Street.
• Running across the Grand Canyon with Bobby Christensen. Bobby ran back across, Rim to Rim to Rim, but I had bonked on the way up and hitched a ride from the North Rim to the South Rim with another runner in a car driven by a total stranger.
• The Triad’s Six Star Medal recipients, for completing the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon, Chicago Marathon, Tokyo Marathon, Berlin Marathon and London Marathon. Bobby Booze, Colleen Wait, Lisa Aponte-Wolff, Bill Raabe, Shawn Roberts, Kelly Reid and former Triad runner Zoila Lambert have achieved the feat. And more are on the way.
• The Valentine’s Heartbreaker Marathon and Relay in Country Park.
• Lastly, but most importantly, I thank my family for its support. Joe, the Kiser student and track athlete at the time, triggered interest in running for Will and me. And Valerie has not only heard me say "I need to work on a post" more times than she can count, but she came up with the right motivation in the year after the pandemic started and with the news company's support gone: "Why don't you start your own site?"
Thanks, everyone!
Eddie