We are on vacation near Tampa, Florida and independently both of us thought it would be fun to do a race while we were here.
We lucked out in with a 5km race tonight in Ybor City, a historic neighborhood northeast of downtown Tampa. The race is called Richard's Run for Life and is a cancer fundraiser.
We almost missed the race with the traffic/rush hour of Tampa. Parked and did our "warm-up" run to pick up our numbers with 15 minutes to spare for the 7 pm start.
In 2006 this race had 660 runners. 2007 there was 67
3. This year there was around 1200! But they handled it really well.The course is not really scenic: several out and backs on city streets starting and finishing at the historic Cuban Club built in 1917.
The race was really well organized with lots of volunteers for packet picket and for the post race party. The post race food was really tasty tacos and paella with free wine, beer and soda.
Trisha nailed her fastest time in a couple of years with 25:15 (8:07).I ran 18:38 (5:59), 15th overall and my fastest time this year. I grabbed a 1st place paella plate in one of the old man age groups.
It took a long time to get to the awards ceremony. The reason: 1200 people and they were doing the results BY HAND!. It was like a time warp back to the '70s. I have no idea how this race managed to get these results organized. As you crossed the finish line you were passed a card with your overall finish position. It was then up to you to en
ter your name, address and finish time on the card.These cards were then placed into little plastic troughs for each age group in random order. Then one guy sorted these cards and stapled the top three from each age group on a larger result card. Trisha and I stood and watched to really see how this worked. Even more amazing the race organizers announced that the full results will be up online by Sunday night! Someone actually has to type in all these results...youch!! The old school way did work, but man, someone get these guys some computerized results! :-)
Full 2008 results can be found at Cool Running.
Fun race, great food (and lots of it) and organization with cool and unique age group awards. Hopefully we can do it again.
4 comments:
It is a great event and it was my first time doing it after hearing so much about it. I had only been waiting for it all year. The food and entertainment were great. Beer, wine, food, music, great friends and great athletes, how much better can it get?!
Nice job Swanson's...you know how to vacation! Hurry home so we can all go running....
Congratulations on your times! I was there too! Pictures were just posted to photos-by-shack.com if you haven't gotten to those yet :)
"Old man's age group"...hey, that's not nice, nor is it even true. We're young bucks - and don't you forget that!
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