Gainesville 15K Run and Coverage

I had signed up in advance over the Internet (and paid $30) to run in a 15-kilometer road race west of Gainesville Saturday. As many as 1000 runners were touted as being in the event (divided between 5K, 10K, and 15K runs). But the night before the race, I knew that I was physically feeling too bad to run it. So I skipped it, in my mind counting the $30 fee as a donation to the race's organizers (a non-profit group promoting cancer research). But it did make me feel that it would be better in the future for me to just wait until race day to sign up to run.

The Gainesville Sun was one of the local companies sponsoring this event. So, with its support and the large number of runners, I presumed that they would publish the race's results the next day. I presumed wrong. Although they did have enough space in the paper to publish a lengthy article by someone (once again) claiming that 89.1/WUFT (Gainesville's Public Radio station) plays too much classical music. Which it doesn't. Much of the sports section wasn't about actual sports events, but rather about the NFL Draft (which I couldn't care less about).

But back to the race: when I went to see the race course beforehand, I was told that it was over a 5K course. All three races would start simultaneously. The 5K runners would do one lap, the 10K runners two laps, and the 15K runners three. I drove around the course, which was simply a lot of zigzagging through the neighborhoods in the area.

If I am going to run a 15K road race, I would like the course to be more interesting. And not a matter of running laps! I wasn't there for the race Saturday, but I can imagine how confusing it must have been for the various runners of the three different distances at the lap marker.

In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't run. My body needs to recuperate and I didn't need to tax it any more than necessary. The above criticisms were more annoyances than anything else, so those alone wouldn't have kept me from the race. It's just too bad that my local newspaper once again is displaying its misplaced sense of priorities. Here was a community event with many participants, and for a good cause.