Road Racing Again
I’ve been thinking about road racing.
I have run two road races in the last 30 days and it reminded me of how they are.
Where I live in New England we have a very robust distance running community. The local road racing scene has been a thing since the running boom of the 1970’s and before.
I remember the early days of road racing.
It was a time when there were few 5K’s.
If anyone was running a 5K race it was on a track and the USATF was involved.
And there were few half marathons.
Those distances didn’t really exist outside of a couple specialty races.
The old road racing circuit was made up of mostly 10K’s and 5-milers, and a couple of odd distances that were just the course length.
But even those races were novel compared to a few decades earlier.
The emergence of regularly maintained well-paved roads after World War Two made road racing possible. The marathoners and distance runners of the 60’s and 70’s discovered that they now had open roads to do their training on.
The running boom of the 1970’s peaked and ebbed. It was mostly weird skinny guys (and it was 99% guys) with social problems. Engineers, math teachers, running nerds, and others who found the pull of competing completed something in their lives.
A second boom in the 80’s and 90’s brought the sport to the recreational masses.
Running shoes became a thing and then became a fashion accessory. Celebrities emerged. Not only the likeable professional athletes but cultural influencers like Oprah.
This was when there was an explosion of road 5K’s. and half marathons.
5K was an approachable distance. Even the most casual of runners could finish in an hour. You didn’t really need to train for it. You could collect a T-shirt and maybe something else, like a pie.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of a race pie to draw the crowds.
Every town and charity could find 3 miles of good road to hold a race on.
Then there was the marathon. The marathon distance was a bit mythic in the old days. The average Joe Q. Public couldn’t really wrap their head around running 26 miles. It was a bit of a unicorn distance.
The marathon was logistically hard to set up and manage. There weren’t that many. Only a few big cities held them outside of the Olympics. The first New York marathon was not until 1970. Chicago not until 1977.
During the second running boom the ½ marathon distance became popular. It was a distance that was challenging but not critically so. You had to train for it, but it wasn’t an overwhelming commitment that the full marathon was. It was a good steppingstone for those new citizen runners who had caught the bug and were progressing through the distances of their addiction.
Before the proliferation of the ½ marathon we had longer road races. But these were typically 30K’s and 20-milers. These were positioned on the calendar by the local running clubs as training runs for the established marathons.
The biggest difference was probably the attitude. Road runners trained and raced for time. That was the whole point. Doing the work and showing that work at the race. It was a community built around hard training.
The road races were the focal point where those runners gathered.
Now, as we jog into the future, a lot of these older races are fading away. The club runners who founded them as a labor of love are aging out. The towns and cities whose roads they use don’t want liability. The costs and logistics have become untenable.
The running boom of the last 20 years has seen the explosion of ultras and other adventure format races. These fill the need of those among us who become bored and sated with road racing and want something more.
5K’s, 1/2’s and marathons have proliferated to the point that on any given Sunday in the spring I’m probably within 10 miles of a half dozen 5K’s. Those 50 hard-core loners are probably still there, but they are awash in a sea of hundreds of others.
Oh, and, at least in the States, competitors are evenly spread across genders.
There you go.
A survey of the last 50 or so years of racing for our 500th episode.
There was a time, early in my running journey, where I did a lot of road racing. The Groton 10K was my re-entry into the sport just before I turned 30.
In retrospect I might say that I loved road racing. But, those are probably the rose-colored glasses clouding my actual feelings.
The epiphany I got from those first races after not running since high school was the brightness of the challenge. Races were so incredibly focusing.
And this, I think ,that’s really what it was for me. The ability of the race to sweep a clear path through all the things besieging my mind. To be at the starting line and throw that switch. To crank my effort level up to max and hold myself on that painful edge. It had a great brightness and clarity to it at a time when I needed that.
And as I started to go longer and train for the marathon I had to learn how to spread that fevered, bright focus out over 30K or 20-miles and still finish. To find that point where I had gone too fast and battle through. Because I always went out too fast. It was part of my game.
Where else in life can you throw yourself at something with such recklessness and abandon? The road race does not lie. It strips you bare and holds your bones over the fire.
And that’s why people become addicted and unbalanced. They want more of that purity. More of that unfiltered painful fix of clarity.
To peer out from under a sweat dripping cap, your legs and lungs on fire, frantically scanning the horizon for the finishing chute.
That’s the good stuff.
The heavy breath and footfalls of the runner trying to overtake you. The slight wobble and slowing of the runner in front as you calculate your move.
That’s the good stuff.
That’s what makes you feel alive. It’s a drug. It’s addictive.
And then it’s over.
It seems so hard and long when you’re in it, but it’s over in a flash. Then there is the glow of the effort. The feeling of pure, honest accomplishment. The slight nagging regret and recrimination of not being able to find more speed or effort in a crucial moment. Of pacing poorly. Of letting an opportunity slip by.
You have to admit there is a reason road races are popular. As so there is a reason that road racing can take over our lives. Or at least provide a temporary escape from reality.
Like a drug.
Or a carnival ride.
So, my friends, how about going out and finding a road race?
They’re still out there.
How about an old 5-miler put on my some weird, skinny old guys from the local running club, maybe sponsored by the Rotary Club or the local Knights of Columbus?
Slip on a hand-lettered cotton T-shirt. Pull on an old pair of sweatpants.
Line up at the start on a cold November morning. Shout at the void. Howl at the moon.
Lose yourself in the painful bliss of effort.
Beat yourself sane against their bright edges.
Take to the roads.