Piece of Eight

By my first cross-country season at Florida State University I had already been racing for almost eight years. But I was still puzzled when I learned that the Metro Conference Championships would be contested over eight kilometers.

"How far is eight kilometers?" I asked.

"About forty yards less than five miles."

And so it is. In the necessarily imprecise world of cross country, for practical purposes eight kilometers is five miles. I was charmed; this was the shortest distance that could be measured with an even number of miles and an even number of kilometers, the first intersection of old British imperial measurement with the metric system. 8K remains a staple of men's college cross-country racing, even though 10K is the official championship distance. Throughout the 1980s I'd occasionally run into an 8K on the roads somewhere, such as the Summer Breeze Road Race in Tuscaloosa, Alabama or North Carolina's Maggie Valley Moonlight Race. At home in Tallahassee, though, eight kilometers seems to be an ill-fated distance.

Oh, it shows up in cross country. The men's cross-country teams of both Florida A&M University and Florida State University race almost exclusively at 8K until the post season. The Gulf Winds Track Club's Miller Landing Madness (née Miccosukee Madness, née Tom Brown Bash) may have changed names, courses, and venues over the years, but it has always been an eight-kilometer cross-country race. However, while Gulf Winds TC offers a slate of road races each year of distances from 5K to 50K (even including a 6K), 8K is not among the offerings. I do not believe that Gulf Winds TC has ever held an 8K on the roads. This is not to say that there haven't been 8K road races in Tallahassee. The Stroh's Run For Liberty and the Music Mania 8K come to mind. In 1990 and 1991 the ECHO Run was the RRCA state 8K championship for Florida. More recently Big Bend runners had the opportunity to enjoy the Shaw's Fall Classic Five Mile (recall that "five miles" is just an alternate spelling of "eight kilometers"). Aside from a common distance, though, the most significant thing that these races share is that they are gone. They are history.

Is it a curse? Because I don't see any reason why this should be the case. Longer races have carved out a history in the Tallahassee running scene, as have shorter ones. Nowadays, when someone mentions to me that their organization wants to put on a 5K road race as a fundraiser, I suggest that they try an 8K. As you can notice from a quick inspection of the racing calendar, no one has taken me up on this. I don't know of any reason why not, though. Yes, 5K is a popular distance, but 5K races are the peanuts of road racing--good but all too plentiful. I have nothing against 5K races (I do direct one, after all), but sometimes there are three in town on the same day. Will your 5K be the one that local runners decide to attend, or will they all end up at the other two? Even if you have the date to yourself, suppose that it rains. A runner wakes up, and hears the raindrops hitting his window. "Oh well," he thinks, falling back asleep. "There will be another 5K next weekend." And he is right.

But these arguments don't apply to an 8K. If there is more than one race in the area on Saturday, are you going to run just another 5K or the only 8K on the local racing calendar? If the weather is less than ideal, are you going to give up your only chance of the year to run 8K, or are you going to pack an extra towel and brave the elements?

So far, though, the Tallahassee road-racing schedule remains impervious to this logic. Maybe it's the curse. But having more faith in reason than in the supernatural, I'm going to continue to argue the advantages of 8K.

Links:

• Chris Lake wins Miller Landing Madness 2009
  http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/2009/08/chris-lake-wins-miller-landing-madness.html
  
  
• Course records [including 8K] for the Apalachee Region Park Trail
  http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/2009/10/course-records-for-leon-county.html
  
  
• My last 8K
  http://www.gulfwinds.org/raceresults/2002/shaw_02.htm
  
  
• Music Mania 8K course certification map
  http://www.usatf.org/events/courses/maps/showMap.asp?courseID=FL01033DL