Houston Half-Marathon

Thousands of people took part in the Houston Striders’ Half-Marathon on Sunday, October 25. I had participated in my first Houston Striders’ run 20 years ago. Once I found out about it upon my arrival from Luanda, I signed up for the run without thinking through. Not to speak of participating in a long distance run, I had not been running much at all in a while on a regular basis. My Sunday morning run in Luanda from our staff house in Ilha to Pointe Final doesn’t even come close to training for a long distance run. Anyway, on Sunday I got up at 5:00 AM, left home at 6:00 AM (without waking up my wife) to run through the streets of Houston on a cool, crisp, morning along with many others like me with a running problem. My goal was to be able to complete the race within the allotted time. Complete I did (time 2:13:45 – lot worse than my past record), but it was a struggle for the last two miles. Besides lack of training, age played its part too. I was in the age group 60-64. I suppose, “once a runner, always a runner”.