The Vardeman Sweet Potato 5K

Saturday was the Sweet Potato Festival at Vardeman. If you have never been, do yourself a favor and mark you calendars for the first Saturday of November 2022. Penny and I have been going for several years now and grieved the COVID closure of 2020. We were eager to attend this time, and I always do their 5K. I especially like the race because it is so low key, simple, small. We line up, somebody says go, and we run. We run by the high school, we run down some nondescript streets, we run by a rural cemetery, we run back to the start huffing and puffing.

Then their are the vendors downtown. That's my wife's thing. She will shop and shop and shop. Usually, I find a booth selling local honey, make my purchase, then I am done. This year, I added some sweet potatoes to my shopping list. I bought a forty pound box for twenty bucks. Penny cooked some last night. They were good, yeah. They were extra good, heck yeah.

The race was nice. Forrest made the trip with us this time. Vicki Jee from Greenwood also showed up. So the delta trio took on the course. Forrest dropped Vicki and me early. For most of the race, I thought Vicki was ahead of me. Another woman there had on the same outfit, was about the same size, and had the same hair color. When it became obvious that I was not going to catch the women in red-- whom I thought was Vicki-- I became despondent. First my son, now an older woman who just started running. 

Sigh.

I finished in 31:58, a 10:23 pace. I was fit to run faster, but I messed up my taper with a tough session on Money Road Wednesday. Overall, however, I ran a hard three miles with a little bit of climbing. A good training stimulus, no doubt. About Forrest beating me, I really did not grieve. He had a good race, ran a PR, did 27:something. I congratulated him on a good run. Vicki ran a PR and finished a little behind me. After the run, we found out that they were not doing awards. I did not mind, but I sincerely hope that this does not portend something more serious. Kosciusko dropped their 5K, and I really hated that. I loved running there, and it was Penny's and my favorite festival. Now Kosciusko has been supplanted by Vardeman.

Besides the vendors and the run, Vardemon has the best food of any outdoor gathering I have ever been to. They have all the food folks on one street and the smell alone is enough to make you howl at the moon. There are chicken dinners, funnel cakes, ice-cream, hot dogs, hamburgers, corndogs, Mexican, fish, bbq, and more and more and more. Forrest got a Philly cheese steak while Penny and I went bbq.

 

One vendor on the block and a half
of heaven in Vardeman

The terrible trio from Greenwood

We drove home happy. Penny got to shop. Forrest and I got to run. We all got to eat. What's not to like?