A 5K road loop in Tom Brown Park

One thing that directors of established road races seldom have to worry about is a course. The next director of the Boston Marathon, the Palace Saloon 5K, or the Springtime 10K won't have to come up with a course, won't have to agonize over finding a venue with decent parking, access to restrooms, and a minimum of traffic. Even if the course is lousy, tradition excuses you from improving it.

New events aren't so lucky. Of course, there's nothing to prevent the newly-minted director of the First Annual 5K Charity Run/Walk for Cross-eyed Kittens from using the course of an established race. This is easy enough to do because in spite of my protests, most of these races are 5K runs. Old timers on the Tallahassee running scene will bore you to death with reminiscences about how every other 5K in town in the 1970s and 1980s was run as two loops around Messer Field. The Maclay Gardens State Park 5K course gets used for several races each year, in spite of the fact that the Gardens are bursting to the seams when a race attracts over 200 runners. Races on the Florida State University campus recycle the same few 5K courses over and over again.

There are also several 5K races held in Tom Brown Park. Tom Brown is a fine venue for a road race. There is plenty of parking. There are many public toilets. Tom Brown Park's stretch of the Goose Pond Trail is 1.55 miles of paved, multi-use trail on which you can run without fear of being flattened by a tractor trailer.

In spite of this, there is no decent road-race course in Tom Brown Park.

For starters, most of them aren't road race courses. The Lincoln High School Invitational 5K is, quite unashamedly, a cross-country race. The AIDS 5K , the Tails and Trails, and the Schools Stomping out Diabetes 5K runs, however, all included long stretches of hiking trails or other terrain that would be considered cross country. The Fallen Heroes 5K stayed mostly to pavement, but only by having two 180-degree turns on the Goose Pond Trail--which also meant that you had runners going in two different direction trying to use the same narrow trail. The Goose Pond Trail can't really handle two-way traffic in a large footrace, but it's adequate for several hundred runners of one-way traffic, say as part of a loop.

So here is a 5K loop course for Tom Brown Park.


Start on the Goose Pond Trail near Pavilion 13 and head towards Weems Road. Better yet, start on the park road parallel to the trail near the Pavilion, and then turn onto the trail where it crosses the road. This gives you more room for the runners at the start of the race. At the end of the trail, turn left onto Weems and head up the hill to Easterwood Drive. Turn left onto Easterwood Drive. Just after the tennis courts but before Easterwood takes you out of Tom Brown Park and on to Connor Boulevard, turn left onto a park road that takes you downhill and past the Lake Leon playground. Near the dog park, this park road makes a very close approach to the Goose Pond Trail. Hop over to the trail and continue to the vicinity of Pavilion 13 and the finish line.

The loop is extremely close to being exactly five kilometers. Close to two kilometers of that is on the traffic-free Goose Pond Trail. Easterwood and Weems aren't sleepy country lanes, but they aren't highways, either. Tom Brown Park is perched on the slopes of the Lake Lafayette basin, so there are some hills--but is that a bad thing? I've described the loop going counter-clockwise, but it's a loop--there's nothing to prevent a hypothetical race director from sending runners around it clockwise, or changing the location of the start.

Of course, there's nothing to prevent a hypothetical race director from continuing to send runners around hair-pin turns on the Goose Pond Trail, or through the woods to play "Find-the-Root" on the hiking paths. But now you'll know that they had another option.

Links:

• The Tom Brown 5K loop at America's Running Routes
  http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=365451