Longtime judge regrets one decision: Skipping ’88 Cap 10K
He’s run in all but that one. Now 72, he’ll make his 40th appearance Sunday.
Thinking back nearly 50 years, Jon Wisser remembered that in June of 1968, when he was a 23-year-old U.S. Army first lieutenant in Vietnam, he competed in a one-mile race. Trading his combat boots for an old pair of tennis shoes, Wisser finished in a very respectable 4 minutes and 35 seconds.
Ten years passed before Wisser raced again, this time in the inaugural Statesman Capitol 10,000, but he’s been running hard now for the past four decades. Just two months ago at the 3M Half Marathon, Wisser, now 72, finishing among the top 20 percent of all entrants. His time of 1:58:51 placed him third in the men’s 70-to-74 age division.
“The first Capitol 10,000 in 1978 was the first (long-distance) race I ever ran,” Wisser said. “I had
never run more than three miles before that race and wasn’t sure I would make it to the finish line. I flew down Congress Avenue and did the first mile in about 5:30 and thought that wasn’t too bad. By the end of the second mile, I was dying, and by the time I dragged myself across the finish line, it had taken about 44 minutes.
“I learned a painful lesson about the not going out too fast.”
Well-known in the running community as “Judge Wisser,” he was first elected to the Travis County district court in 1982 and was re-elected every four years until 2006, when he retired. Now a senior district court judge, Wisser steps forward to handle cases when other judges fall ill, take vacations or have scheduling conflicts. He also officiates at a large number of weddings each year.
Since that first Cap 10K in 1978, Wisser has missed only one race in the event’s lengthy history, and he still smarts when he thinks about it.
“It was 1988, and my wife told me that all good parents took their young children to Disneyland, and since our son was six years old, we had to go,” Wisser recalled. “I protested a bit but was out-voted so I spent that Capitol 10K Sunday in Orange County, Calif. — a trip I regret every year when the Cap 10 comes around!”
Typically a top-three agegroup finisher in area races, Wisser has career bests of 17:15 for the 5K distance, 39:30 for a 10K and 1:22 for a half marathon. And he’s posted those times with little formal training as a runner. He does, however, play a significant amount of highlevel tennis in USTA leagues.
“I am currently on two tennis teams and play tennis three times a week,” Wisser said. “I started running initially to aid in long tennis matches. Several of my teams have made it to the national championships in California and Arizona.”
After four decades or running, Wisser hasn’t slowed in his pursuit of top times and said he was less than satisfied by his recent 3M Half Marathon result.
“I was pretty disappointed in my time at 3M this year since I ran around 1:53 the year before,” he said. “I have found as I age that the weather has a greater effect on my times. When the humidity is high and/or the temperature is above 55 (degrees), I suffer. Of course, running only three times a week for a total weekly mileage of 15 miles contributes a lot to my slow times. However, out of all the runners I was competing with 20-30 years ago, none are running races regularly – if at all — anymore.
“When I play tennis poorly, I tell folks I am a runner ,and when I run poorly, I tell people I am a tennis player. That gives me excuses for poor performances in both sports.”