Some Half-Marathons in My Area

After successfully completing the Ocala Half-Marathon on January 20, I began to look ahead on the calendar for more upcoming races of this distance taking place in my general area.  Since I work on Saturdays and am off on Sundays, I focused on the races offered on Sunday and ignored the rest.  One race stuck out: the Tallahassee Half-Marathon, held on February 3.  I had only been in my home state's capital city once in my life, in 1994, and I was only then driving through it on my way to Texas.  A visit and a run...yes, that sounded appealing, at least at the beginning...

I was hoping that the Tallahassee Half-Marathon's course would wind through the various interesting sites of this important city, including Florida State University, Florida A&M, and the downtown area which features various state government buildings such as the state capitol.  Instead, though, when I visited the event's website, I discovered that, although the race did begin and end at FSU, it quickly turned down a "rails-to-trails" path that ran out of the city: a "there-and-back" course, avoiding the more interesting sites I wanted to experience as a runner/tourist.  That's a shame, because I already have a race like that in Gainesville: the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon, held in the late autumn on another converted railway-to-pathway (leading away from Gainesville...and then back).  It's fun to run in (I've done it twice so far), but I like the more tourist-friendly Five-Points event held in February, and which goes through the heart of Gainesville as well as the University of Florida.  Alas, though, I'm committed to something else (more important) this year when this race happens on February 17...

Well, my disappointment at the Tallahassee race course turned out to be a moot point as I had developed an annoying, nagging cough due to a cold combined with allergies.  I didn't feel up to running that distance anyway, so passing up on that race wasn't such a bad deal.  Besides...

On March 3, in Tavares, Florida, there will be a half-marathon race that goes by some pretty lakeside scenery.  It's on a Sunday morning, too.  In 1987, I lived for about seven months down there in Lake County, a few miles west of Tavares in Leesburg (in the general vicinity of Orlando).  It's not a very long drive there and back, and the race looks very interesting.  So if things keep looking positive and I keep up my health, then maybe I'll try this one more half-marathon before the temperatures here in Florida begin to heat up in the springtime. 

There is one additional point I'd like to make about the way some of these races are organized, one that has made me scratch some of them off my list of possibilities. The race packet pick-up is often mandated the day before in the race's city, which means that, unless I already live near or relatively close by, I would have to make an overnight commitment to stay at a hotel (I think that's their cynical idea behind this policy) or make two long trips.  To the credit of the Tallahassee and Tavares organizers, neither of them made packet pickup a requirement the day before the race, giving runners the option of picking them up on raceday morning before the start.  Others are rigid with this pack pickup policy: if the race is farther from my home than Ocala (about 40 miles distant), these folks can just forget about my participation.  So another race taking place near Live Oak next month that could have been fun to run in won't see me anywhere near there since they have this ridiculous "day-before" mandated packet pickup policy...