Monday, August 9, 2010

Cross Country for the rest of us

Cross-country season is approaching and young runners are preparing for it on the middle school, high school, and collegiate levels. With increasing frequency during your runs you can expect to have to yield the trail to speedy mobs of athletes. But you don’t have to be on a team or spend half your day in a classroom to enjoy cross country. You don’t even have to wait for the season. There are plenty of races in the area that will let anyone get off the roads and into forests, fields, and some of the finest landscape of the Big Bend.


For instance, the Mike the Dog Five Mile is being run this morning in the Wakulla State Forest, where no one has ever raced before. A benefit for Cauzican Animal Rescue, the event also includes a Pampered Poodle 5K if five miles of trails is too much of a good thing.


On August 28 the Miller Landing Madness gives runners a choice of 8K, 5K, and 3K events. Either way you get a chance to test yourself on the hills of the Lake Jackson watershed in Phipps Park.


Among many other athletic accomplishments, Steve Prefontaine was a three-time NCAA cross country champion. After his untimely death in 1975, the Salute to Prefontaine 5K was established in the Silver Lake Recreation Area of the Apalachicola National Forest and has been run every year since, including this year on September 25. If you’re intimidated by the rugged course of the Prefontaine you might consider the second annual Quail Trail 5K, held the same morning on the grounds of Pebble Hill Plantation.


Runners also get a choice on October 9, the date of the Pine Run 20K at Tall Timbers and the FSU Invitational. A three-year-old revival of the Pine Run 20K run from 1977 to 2006 at the Southlands Experimental Forest outside of Bainbridge, the current Pine Run is held at Tall Timbers Research Station. People describing the course usually dwell on the brutal climbs up from the shores of Lake Iamonia, seldom mentioning the views of the lake, the Beadel House, venerable live oaks, and forest trails. Meanwhile, the FSU Invitational has been hosted by Florida State since 1972, and has almost always included an open race. This year the high school junior varsity races will be combined with the 5K community race, so you might find yourself in hot competition with a young runner looking to move up to the varsity squad. For the second straight year FSU is holding the Invite at Leon County’s Apalachee Regional Park Trail.


So those are some of the upcoming opportunities for the rest of us to do some cross-country running. If you’d also like to support the sport, consider turning out for the Coach Mike Run For Kids 5K at 8:00am on August 7 at Cobb Middle School. The race is a benefit for Leon County Schools’ middle school cross-country program and a memorial to the late Cobb Middle School cross-country coach, Mike Schneider.


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Posted by Herb Wills at 11:35 AM
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