Jack's Corner

Welcome to Jack's Corner.  Jack is the devoted and passionate leader of the ORC's weekly Sunday morning long runs.  We thank him for his commitment, encouragement and never-ending passion for running.  From his "corner" we bring you excerpts from the emails he sends regularly to the Sunday morning group. 

Monday, March 22

Yesterday’s run was somewhat lightly attended, but most rewarding to those who showed up to enjoy an idyllic temperature.  Since the Art Festival had Park Avenue closed, we had to improvise on our parking spots.  Still, it was nice to be able to run without traffic up to Canton.  

I counted fourteen runners—it could have been a bit more.  We were elated to see Geralynn show up.  She was visiting from Viera and is one of only a few on our list who do not live in Orlando .  Geralynn  was a long time running partner of Chris, Bob, Rose, Barbara and I going back twenty years and it is always great to see her.  Also, welcome back to Leslie who had taken a sort of sabbatical.  

The only “excused absences” yesterday were Wendy and Liz.  Wendy ran her gazillionth  recent half marathon:  FL Beach Halfathon on Feb 21st in Ft Desoto State Park near St Pete, FL  That’s a new one on me!  Liz was cross-training with a kayaking run on the Dora Canal and, perhaps, wrestling with alligators.  

VISITOR FROM AUSTRALIA ! The real surprise of the morning was that we had a visitor show up from Brisbane, Australia.  Needless to say THAT is a PR. for our group!.  David Burke flew into town on Saturday, and   contacted me by e-mail late Saturday evening. This guy took a taxi from his hotel and was there before 7:00 AM Sunday!  He was a great person and he later sent an e-mail thanking the group and inviting us to join him if we ever get to Brisbane . Here it is:

Hi Jack, I just wanted to say thanks again for this mornings run, it was extremely enjoyable and a memory that will last a lifetime.

If you , or anyone from ORC, visits Brisbane , be sure to look me up that this email address.

The club I do my speed work with in Brisbane is called http://www.patcarroll.com.au/group-runs.htm, but I’m also part of several other more casual running groups, details of which can be found here:   http://www.patcarroll.com.au/PCRG_group_long_runss.htm   My favourite is Brisbane Running Buddies (BRB). Any of these groups would welcome visitors from ORC, so please feel free to pass on these details.  

Kind regards   Dave

So it looks like ORC has again extended its reach to another continent.  We will have a return visit from a Brit by the name of Richard Bruce towards the end of May. If this keeps up, we may have to set up an international desk!!  

Hope to see a good bunch of you out there next Sunday.  We have a narrow window of good weather to soak up over the next two months.  Please join us to enjoy it.

Saturday, March 13

We had a nice turnout for the races this morning.  I was able to account for 17 of us completing the 10K. I displayed very poor judgment and also ran the 2 miler. We were represented in nine of the eleven age groups between 25 and 75 years. Curiously, we are devoid of runners in the ages 35 and 70 groups. Congratulations to the three people in our group who placed in their age groups:  

Bob:  He beat our nemesis Fano Agosto for the second 10K in a row in the age 75 group. That almost never happens!  Bob had a second place, but first place went to a ringer from Colorado.  

Billy and Barbara placed third in the 60 and 65 age groups, respectively.  So the B's have it--Bob, Billy and Barb!  

Christine came up with a PR in her age group.  She was actually one of the few people I saw today during or after the race.  Congrats, Christine.  

Sabrina and Cheryl apparently ignored their injuries and competed anyway!!  

Others I could account for include Michele, Mikko, Lytle, Liz, Kirsty, Jacob, Glenn, Dylan, Dave, and Amy.  I'm sure I've missed someone.  

Thanks to Seth, whom I am sure you racers saw and heard entertaining us with his singing group as they rendered some great harmony and tunes for us.  (Someone has finally found a way to keep Seth from running, although I am suspicious that he may have run to the corner of Palmer and Alabama to join his quartet.  

Hope to see a good bunch of you folks out there tomorrow!

From Billy:  First: "Congratulations" to Michele and Tom. "Best of luck to both of you".   Second: The cats out of the bag. Congratulations to Jack Gallagher.   1st in his age group in two miler. 20:56 5th in his age group in 10K  72:18 (right after running the two mile) 37th overall in the Distance Dare (total time of both races) 2nd overall over age 60 (Jack is 75) in Distance Dare  

Thursday, March 11

Visitors planning to join us over the next few weeks. Last Sunday we had a visitor from California, and have several more scheduled to join us in the coming weeks.  This Sunday we have Antoine visiting us.  He is training for the Ottawa Marathon, so I assume he is a Canadian.  On March 28 we expect to see Marcela Vega from New York  She (?) ibis a member of the NY Runners and is training for a May 2 Vancouver Marathon. (Canada seems to be a popular destination)  Finally, Bruce Richard from the UK will be coming back to join us again on May 29th. We gifted him with an ORC shirt which he wanted to acquire and he gifted me with a shirt from his first marathon (Robin Hood Marathon in Nottingham)  All in all, it looks like we have gotten our group on the national and international radar screen!

Sunday, February 28

Congratulations to Jen, Liz and Amy on their Gasparilla half-marathon performances and to Wendy, Dylan and Seth on their marathon efforts.  You all turned in some very respectable times.  It's likely that my hunt and peck system did not find everyone from our Sunday Group, so please weigh in with your comment.  

Congratulations also to Rose, Wendy and Kirsty for their half marathon performances last Sunday.  Rose ran in Ft. Lauderdale and Wendy and Kirsty ran in Jacksonville. I continue to plead with Wendy to down-gear a bit on her frenetic race schedule!  I have about lost count on Wendy's schedule over the past few months, but I know she has been on a tear since Space Coast.  

Meanwhile back at the ranch, we had to settle for a skeleton crew of about a dozen or so stay-at-homers, compared to about 18 people last weekend, including Diane, one of our regulars of past years.  The majority of the group probably covered the ten mile route. Today we welcomed a new runner, Stacy, who has asked to be added to our group list.  Welcome, Stacy.  Next time you will get to meet some of the folks listed above!  Rumor has it that Christine knocked off her first 10 miler with Brother Bob,  I was bringing up the rear and expected to find them further on, but they must have been burning it up "cause I never did find them. So, Christine, Big Brother is watching even when you can't see him!  Congratulations on your new distance PR!!

Hope to see you all next Sunday!

From Amy:  Just wanted to make mention of Cheryl and Tom who also ran the half at Gasparilla, and Mikko for completing the full.  Jen and I also completed the "Bud Light Challenge", meaning we tackled the 15k and 5k on Saturday morning, before doing the half on Sunday.  Mikkoa also ran the 15k on Saturday.  We had a great group of ORC'ers represented and most of us got together for dinner on Saturday night.  I think everyone had a pretty good weekend. 

Saturday, February 20

The 5K Run Around the Pines took place this morning, and our Sunday group was well-represented.  I personally saw about 8 of you and found results for a half dozen more of the group. I know that Christine set a PR this morning, and I believe Liz also may have posted  back-to-back PR's in her last two races. Is that right, Liz?  

I saw Barbara, Sabrina, Christine, Vicky, Michele, Dave and Seth.  I missed Vilma, Liz and Billy.  My wife, Mary, came along with me and walked the course at a brisk pace.  

Dave was back from half-marathon in Tokyo the prior week-end and had some interesting wars stories to tell!  

Turnout for the past two weeks has been somewhat lighter, but I am expecting a good turnout tomorrow, even though it will be only a day after a competition.  It should be an ideal morning for running!  (over the past month we have been drawing 18-20 people on average)  We seem to have a fair number of people nursing injuries.  I am sure that some of you are taking a little break after a spate of marathons and half marathons over the past two months.  

Hope to see you tomorrow.

From Wendy:  On my way to Jax for the Breast Cancer Half.. Running for the tatas! Congrats to all the runners that ran this morning & the PR's!! Way to GO!  :) 

Saturday, February 6

My wife, Mary, and I decided to go watch the Lady Track Shack Race this morning, something I haven't done before.  It was truly impressive, with 2077 women finishing the race, and a lot of familiar faces to boot.  I really wanted to jump in and join the fun, but I knew I would be courting trouble if I tried.  

The nicest part was all of the familiar faces from our group.  I am sure I did not account for every last one of us, but I know that we had over a half dozen of our regulars as well as other Sunday runners such as Charline and Corey (who placed first in her age group with a sub 7 minute pace!).  Among our group were Michele, Amy, Cheryl,  Barbara, Jen, Sabrina and Liz (who now has achieved back to back PR's!) Congratulations, Liz!  My apologies to anyone I may have missed. FYI, there were 14 women over the age of 70 and three of them were over 80!  Both Jon and Betsy Hughes" mothers ran in the 80+ group!  

If I got the date right, Cheryl is also doing the Melbourne Half tomorrow!  Good luck, Cheryl!!  Hope you take a much deserved break after tomorrow.  

Wendy is off in Southern California running a half marathon with Linda, who now resides out there and who has run with us on occasion when she lived here.  

And last but not least, Dave is in Japan running the Uriyasu Half Marathon this weekend.  Hope you did well Dave!  So we have the Sunday group sprinkled around the world this weekend.  Hope those of you who are in town will show up tomorrow.  

We are expecting one new local runner (Sherri) to join us tomorrow, as well as a visitor from Canada. ( Leanne, who is Charline's sister.)  

Hope to see your smiling faces in the morning. It should be great running weather.

Sunday, January 24

Sorry to send you another e-mail so quickly, but I thought I should share with you an updated race report.  Thanks to Dave Berry, I found out that I had missed two of the group in yesterday's report.  You will see highlighted in yellow on the attachment that I missed both Tom Ward and Billy Kovaly.  Tom placed second in his age category with a blistering 18:16 5K and Billy turned in a very respectable 23:10. My apologies to both of you guys.  

While I am at it, we had a wonderful turnout this morning.  I can account for at least 22 people, two of whom were new and one a visitor from Houston. We missed seeing the rest of you.  One of the new people is Glenn, who just sent me an e-mail that he will be back.  Hey Glenn, do you know who the third guy was?  I wasn't sure whether he came with you or just showed up.

I would like to share with you some facts and figures on today's 5.2K race.  I was able to account for 13 of our group who ran today in a race that drew 2760 people, 58% of whom were women!  I have attached a summary of the group performance.  We participated in age groups from 25 to 75 years, a 50 year span. Our female members were represented in seven age groups and our male members in only four.  

I found it somewhat remarkable that there were over 40 runners aged 70 and older, with one guy 85 years old!  One 73 year old man ran a 27:38 5K and an 80 year old woman ran the 5K in 37 minutes flat.  This should give heart to those of you who find yourself in or approaching my age predicament!!  

So much for stats.  I also want to share with you some good news I got after the race.  Michele Brackett and Tom Ward recently became engaged.  Please join me in extending our good wishes to both Michele and Tom!  I think the two of must get out soon to run a celebratory Sunday run with us.  

I have attached the race results which I was able to cull from the website this afternoon. Congratulations to Cheryl, Sabina, Christine, Wendy, Michele, Liz, Rose, Barbara, Jacob, Eric, Dave and Seth on your great performances!  (Jacob and Eric turned in times of 18:13 and 19:12, respectively, and Jacob placed second in his age group with a blistering 5:49 pace!  

We had about 15 people turn out last Sunday, including a visitor from Baltimore who later contacted me and offered her sincere thanks for how well the group took care of her through her ten mile run.  She had special accolades for Bob Raymond  who floated back into town last weekend.  

I am expecting a new face to join us tomorrow.  His name is Glenn and he just qualified for Boston at Disney two weeks ago. Please welcome him when he arrives.  

I hope a good many of you can make it out tomorrow morning.  The weather should be idyllic.  

From Billy:  Did you forget a guy named Jack Gallagher finishing SECOND in the 75 to 79 age group.

Saturday, January 2

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!  We have a new beginning to our lives and, of course, our running.  As I previously reported, 2009 was a year of growth for our Sunday clan, but I am hoping that 2010 will bring us up to the attendance levels we enjoyed not too man years ago.  On that note, I hope we will show up in force tomorrow morning for the first Sunday run of the new year.  

FYI, the Marathonfest Sunday training group will be out bright and early with bags to pick up trash along the route, a custom which has been in vogue for a number of years.  I considered suggesting that we participate, but since our brethren runners are starting earlier than us, we would most likely be bringing coals to Newcastle , as the old saying goes.  

Our Disney runners Cheryl, Leslie, Meghan and Mark are on taper and we hope they will approach the starting line in fine fettle. Hope you can join us for tomorrow’s chilly run!

We also have a contingent of runners training for Gasparilla.  I am not sure who all are training for what distances at Gasparilla, but found out last Sunday that Sabrina will be tackling her first marathon.  Please let us know who you are. And as previously noted, Dave is going to Japan to represent the Orlando Runners Club in February.  

We now have had at least three years in a row of members doing their first marathon (the one which is often the most memorable): Christy and John in 2008; Wendy and Jen in 2009 and Sabrina readying for 2010.  Have I missed anyone? Then, of course, there are the old warhorses who have reached the gazillion mark this year, as previously noted.  

I am attaching evidence that we now have a celebrity runner in our midst!!  Wendy was the subject of an article on running her first marathon.  Congratulations, Wendy!  I hope you will not charge me for running with you in the future.  Seriously, the article is great.  2009 was also the year when Wendy got to be faster than me.  That’s OK since I would like to be the undisputed slowest runner in the group.  

On a personal note, I want to thank each of you for the gift of getting to know you.  It is your camaraderie which helps keep me going at 75.  I am now starting my 23rd year running with the Sunday group and my 27th year of competitive racing.   

As I recorded my last run of the year this past Wednesday, I noted with satisfaction that I had logged close to 1100 miles in 2009, my best mileage in eight years. Also, Space Coast was my 260th competitive race, a pastime which began with a 10K race in 1983 in Baltimore .  (This continues to be a race which finishes on the Pimlico Race Track, where most of the great horses have crossed the finish line.) Guess that makes me an old war horse!!  

If I may take the liberty of giving a bit of advice, it is this:  Drawing upon my years as a financial guy, I have concluded that you cannot manage what you don’t measure.  Over the years I have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that input equals output and you can’t progress if you don’t train right.  An important aspect of that process is tracking your times and mileages so that you can’t kid yourself on the effort you have put into your training.  

We miss those of you who have dropped in the cracks this year and once again invite you to come join the fun.  Also, please let me know if you would prefer to have your name dropped from our distribution list.  

Finally, we will have some visitors in January.  Lynne McCann, our only non-resident regular will be joining us from DC on January 10.  Look forward to seeing you, Lynn!  We also expect a young lady from Baltimore to join us on January 17. 

Click here for articles on Jen and Wendy.

Sunday, December 13

Just wanted to look back over 2009 and give you a sense of our progress this year.  Here are some of the more interesting developments:  

• The Sunday morning group has experienced the healthiest increase in runners in many years.  We currently are averaging about two dozen runners each Sunday versus about a dozen last year.  So the group has doubled in size. Over the past two Sundays we have had four new runners join us. So we are on a roll!
• I can account for about 40 new faces showing up during 2009. About half of these people have become regulars.
• We have experienced a healthy increase in group members training for long distance runs (half-marathons, marathons and ultras (that would be Seth who just covered his 50th state). Congratulations, Seth. To facilitate our long runs, we got a roster set up to let people know who would be running long and when.  This has helped to take the boredom out of these runs and provide safety for our female runners in the wee hours.  We have had representation in the Houston, Hartford, Chicago, Marine Corp, New York City , Space Coast (marathon and half marathon) and Route 66, as well as about two dozen of the group doing the OUC Half.  And this is not a complete list, I am sure. The finale will be Disney in a few weeks, with several people signed up for Goofy and closing in on their last long runs.  I also want to recognize Charline who graduated to the Sunday fasties group.  Last Sunday she ran the California Marathon in Sacramento and qualified for Boston.
• For the second year in a row, we hosted a blanket collection drive which  garnered 130 blankets this year, involved five separate running groups and produced a turnout of 40 of our own group on November 1. (The other four groups were the Winter Park Dawgs, the faster Sunday group, the Sunday Marathonfest runners and the Tri with Sway triathlon training group from Clermont.
• We continue to draw a fair number of out-of-town visitors, thanks to the contact info on the ORC website.  At least a half dozen visitors showed up this year from places like Japan , the UK and states as far away as California . Two people are scheduled to join us in January.

Thus it looks like the group is on track to regain the popularity it had when I moved here in 1987 and we often drew about 50 runners on Sunday mornings.  We again have a sense of vibrancy, a lot of very nice people and enough variety in ages and speeds to make the group attractive to a wide range of runners.  And like that guy at the end of the parade, there will always (hopefully) be Jack at the back of the pack taking shortcuts and retrieving slow and lost runners.

And finally, I would like to encourage those of you who are not yet members of the Orlando Runners Club to consider joining.  You can check out the ORC website for info on the organization.  Dave Berry, one of our members, will be representing the Club in Japan early next year. Now there is a trip worth training for!  Congratulations, Dave.  

Thanks for your company, your inspiration and your friendship this past year.  It is what keeps me going!

Monday, November 30

Yesterday’s Space Coast Half and full Marathons came off on a great morning.  At the risk of having missed some of the Sunday group who raced, I will cover those whom I know were there.

Both Wendy and Cheryl P.R.’d in the Half.  Their race times seem to be in a free fall.  Cheryl turned in a sub 1:55 and Wendy a 2:11. Rose Reeves also turned in a very respectable time.  All three of them placed very respectively in their three ago groups. CONGRATULATIONS TO EACH OF YOU!!!  

In the event I have missed anyone in the Sunday group in the above results, I apologize in advance and ask you to e-mail the rest of us on your participation.  

And then there was the also-ran.  The good news is that I managed to complete the marathon, but what an ugly marathon it was for me!  I had decided that hell or high water, I was going to do Space Coast as my effort and scrap even thinking of Jacksonville .  I was still doing OK passing the half-way mark, but things went downhill quickly from there.  I ended up slowing mile by mile and had to walk most of the last 10K distance.  I finished with a 6:19, about an hour longer than I was shooting for.  

That’s the bad news.  The good news is that I placed first in the age 75 bracket and brought home a nice trophy from this, my 11th and final marathon. While I am most happy about that, I realize that I also finished last in my age category, something you rarely get a trophy for!

Sunday, November 1

Wow!!  What a wonderful turnout today and what a heart-warming expression of caring for those less fortunate than us.  I hope all of you enjoyed the run today as much as I did.  

I can account for 40 or more people out there this morning, and I estimate that we collected between 75 and 100 blankets. I will try to get a more accurate count later.  For sure there will be a lot of homeless men who will be thankful for your generosity and far more comfortable when the cold season hits us.    

When I arrived at 6:40 AM to meet Consuela of the Tri With Sway Triathlon training program, she had already been there and left a bunch of blankets with Todd Thomasson.  Thanks, Todd, for forgetting to change your clock.  Sounds like divine intervention to me!  

Many running groups were represented this morning. These include our Sunday group, ORC members, one of the Marathonfest training group, The Clermont triathlon group, Jon Hughes and Sarah Robertson from Track Shack,  and Charline and Aaron of the faster Sunday running crew.  We also had a lady show up around 9:00 AM and drop off a half dozen blankets.  She is not a runner, but read about the collection in last Tuesday’s Sentinel.  And finally, the Dawgs of Winter Park are executing their own collection and delivery of blankets to the Coalition.  

I hope you all had as much fun as I did this morning.  Gina Wightman brought her husband, Rich, and I had the honor of running 4-5 miles with him.  Rich is the retired Commanding General of NATO Forces in Bosnia and it was fascinating to hear some of his experiences.  

Once again, it was a delight to be with the many people who showed up and I want to express my personal gratitude for your participation.  If you know of anyone else who would want to donate a blanket, please tell them that we would accept them next Sunday.