I'm looking at upcoming distance running races in my local area in Gainesville and surrounding locales, so I decided to check out the Web to see what's up. I was surprised to discover that there's a 10K race this coming Saturday morning to be held on the paved Hawthorne Trail southeast of town with the starting and finishing line at Boulware Springs Park. I'm not interested in shorter distances than 10 K (6.2 miles) and think it might be fun to try this one out. The only problem is that I do get off from work at 10 the previous evening and would have preferred a Sunday race day instead. Oh well...
While checking out that upcoming race I also looked to see whether there was any hint of revival for three of my favorite races: the 10K Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot and the Five Points of Life Half-Marathon here in Gainesville and the Ocala Half-Marathon. All three events were halted in 2020 because of Covid and only the Five Points race resumed this past February...but even that one seems to not be scheduled. That's sad, but understandable, I suppose. It seems the general trend for races in these times is to hold them on outlying sites like parks and rails-to-trails courses where the overhead expenses may be lighter on the organizers. Earlier this year there was a very flexibly run race of multiple distances down in Ocala, completely contained on a looping 5K course inside a park...the distance options ranged from 5K all the way to 50 miles! But I can't seem to find any indication that its parent company, "Awesomesauce" is even still in existence...certainly no more races seem to be in the works for 2023. That's one thing that bugs me about the Internet, where you supposedly can get any information that you want. Well, that's clearly not true, for when someone decides to close shop on something...even if it's gone on for years...they usually just leaving you hanging with no information, wondering whatever the hell happened...
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