Ohio Challenge Series

Greg Everal OCS Director and me        Greg Everal Photo

Huge, ambitious plans were afoot. It was the beginning of 2018, and I needed a challenge. The test? To run shorter races and get faster. I would train for 5K, 5-Mile, and 10K races, and participate in them fairly often, thereby training and racing myself into better shape. To encourage myself to do more of these races, I registered for the Ohio Challenge Series or OCS. There are dozens of races, mostly shorter ones, and competition is by age-group within several broad distance categories.

OCS has been around for something like twenty years. I participated in OCS for many of the early years, but not for the past nine or ten. I was too busy doing marathons and ultramarathons. Now I’d use the challenge to challenge myself to get better. Oh, I would not retire completely from marathoning. I’d just concentrate more on the shorter, faster stuff. Such a strategy may even have a positive effect on said marathons themselves.

Readers of this blog will be aware that this didn’t happen. I didn’t race myself into shape, and I didn’t get faster. I did manage to get more injured. My Achilles Tendonitis seemed to hurt more when I just thought about 5Ks and 10Ks.

However, the competition gets thin near my ancient age-group, and there are those multiple categories. I did not do the required number of 5Ks, but I did run the necessary three 5-Mile/10K races and even exceeded the required two half-marathons in order to compete in those categories. What’s more, I thought I was leading. (Now you have an idea where this is heading.)

Debbie and I attended the OCS awards banquet at Breitenbach Winery yesterday. I expected two category firsts. But a funny thing happened. After winning the 10K category award ($40 and a hat), I learned that I was second in the half-marathon category. A fellow named Joe Tarantino had won. I guess I’ll have to settle for only $30 and a hat for that one.

I did get to meet the new organizers of the series. Nice folks. Will I participate next year? Race myself into shape on the second try? Who knows? Okay: probably.