Today's Florida Track Club Headwaters 5K

 

This morning my running race drought...the last race was in December 2019...ended with a 5K event hosted by the Florida Track Club at Hogtown Creek Headwaters Nature Park here in northern Gainesville a short distance from my home.  A couple of weeks ago I checked out FTC's website to see what they were doing in the midst of this COVID period and discovered that they were holding races...last month they held both a marathon/half marathon and a 10K trail race.  I became a member for a year's span at $30, which gives me some free races as well as discounts on others.  I had never been to Headwaters Park before...it's on NW 45th Avenue just west of US 441 (NW 13th Street in Gainesville).  As the pictured sign indicates, it has its own trail...but our race course had us leaving the park and going down 45th Avenue past Norton Elementary School to 24th Boulevard, turning right on NW 53rd Avenue, turning right soon thereafter on a bike trail that led back the 45th Avenue and back to the park...nice course: I might just use it in the future for training runs!  The race, which didn't use chips with the runners' finishing times simply recorded on paper at the finishing line, began at 8.  It was an unusually cold morning for this time of year with temperatures in the low 40s...I started out with a light jacket that I took off almost halfway through.  I ran a relaxed, consistent pace throughout, finishing with a time of 32:40.  There weren't too many runners entered, so I didn't have to be concerned about overcrowding.  FTC provided water, Starbucks coffee, bananas, and packaged breakfast foods for us after the race was over.  As for COVID protocols, most of the entrants I saw never wore masks and quite a few seemed oblivious to social distancing.  Still, at the starting line when we were more or less bunched together, a few "fellow travelers" and I put on our masks until the race began...as did the FTC volunteer starting the race.  All of the people there, especially the Florida Track Club organizers, were super-friendly and supportive...I'm looking forward to the next event!