Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Pretzel City Sports & Philly Love

As some of you know, I'm a Philadelphia native. I frequently return to the Philly area and therefore do quite a bit of running in Philly and the surrounding areas. The last road race I completed in Philly was Fighting Irish 5k in one of my old stomping grounds, Chestnut Hill, PA. The race, originally held the weekend prior to St. Patrick's Day (fittingly), was postponed last year to the end of September, which is when it will now be held each year indefintely. Smart choice by race directors since now they do not have to compete with the other 50+ local road races held around that time. Great race if you're in Philly late September. VERY hilly, but fun!


So, the point of mentioning the this race is actually because it was at The Fighting Irish 5k where I discovered Pretzel City Sports, "Events with a Twist" (how cute!). Pretzel City Sports is a great local database for Philadephia (and Southeastern PA) road races. They have some excellent road and trail races posted for the coming year. It looks as though they recently updated their site so there's still a few things missing.


I recommend using this site as a great resource for Philly local races, however be sure to heed my warning and DO NOT sign up for the newsletter. The "newsletter" which arrives in your inbox and is a ridiculously lengthy and somewhat spastic plain text e-mail riddled with poor and sometimes distasteful jokes, is way too confusing. You're best off just visiting the site and viewing the race calendar. It seems that Pretzel City Sports President, Ron Horn means well, but he has an off the wall sense of humor and I don't get the relevance of half his jokes. Who knows, maybe it's just me. But hopefully they'll set up a blog soon!

And why we're on the subject of Philadelphia pretzels (ok, somewhat random), I want to take a second to school a few of you on what a REAL philly pretzel looks like (see below). Mmmmmm! The crispy, soft, doughy goodness! Nothing like one of these after a 5 or 10k! ;)

4 comments:

scarinzic said...

that pretzel looks delicious!!

thanks for posting the philly race site. my folks live in central jersey and they're not too far from the pa border. i'll have to check out the listing and see if any are doable!

DFerg said...

Yeah, my parents actually moved just outside of Philly two years ago, but Pretzel City directs a few trail races that are close to their new house. I've been meaning to check them out.

Like the "Ugly Mudder" this weekend. Looks fun!
http://www.pretzelcitysports.com/uglymudder.html

Andy The Kid said...

I did the Philly marathon, it was nice. The whole time, all that I was thinking was whether I would cheez whiz or provolone on my cheez steak(s) upon finishing.
http://newyorkrunning.blogspot.com

Pickel Runner said...

Hey,

For a really great website for finding Philly runs check out WWW.RUNTHEDAY.COM.

You can sign up for their emails. No dirty jokes, just local race info.

Also check out their Winter Pickle Runs. SOOOOOO MUCH FUN!!!