Thursday, January 13, 2011

Looking ahead to the 2011 Gulf Winds Track Club 30K

January in Tallahassee comes with cool days, some of the best weather for doing long runs. It's appropriate then that January is the month of the Gulf Winds Track Club 30K, one of the longest races in the area. The 34th running of the event will be next Saturday morning, January 15.


After the switch to metrics drove the 20-mile racing distance into near extinction, 30 kilometers is the longest standard racing distance short of a 26.2-mile marathon. It's still not a common distance; there are only two 30K races in Florida and USATF hasn't held a national championship 30K since 1988. But at seven-and-a-half miles short of a marathon, a 30K is a good stepping stone on the way to the longer race. The GWTC 30K has been touted as such a way-station on the build-up to the Tallahassee Marathon.


Since its first running in 1978, the GWTC 30K has had sort of a gypsy existence, changing venues every few years. The race was first run in the Apalachicola National Forest on unpaved roads south of the Bloxham Cutoff, near the end of Springhill Road. From there the 30K moved to Natural Bridge, where the roads were unpaved and the sand was deep. By 1982 GWTC had moved the race to the St Marks National Wildlife Refuge, starting and finishing near the St Marks Lighthouse. The road was paved and the course was flat, but you could always count on a stiff breeze blowing out toward the Gulf of Mexico--i.e., in the runners' faces for the first half of the race. It was a a kind of invisible uphill. And at least in 1983, feral hogs wandered out onto the road during the run. It's a wildlife refuge after all.


The 30K returned to Natural Bridge in 2001, by which time the roads had been paved. In 2006, though, race directors Jerry and Jackie McDaniel moved the event to its current location on Old Centerville Road, where the race starts and finishes at Bradley's Pond. Except for a couple of miles of pavement at the start, the 30K is run on the red clay of Old Centerville and Sunny Hill Roads. The roads were first carved out of the hills in ante-bellum times to haul cotton to market, but some of the live oaks lining the way are even older.


The earlier race routes were all almost absolutely flat, but the current 30K course throws some challenging hills at the runners. The morning could be T-shirt weather or it could be frigid, and last year a light rain made for some sloppy running on the clay roads. Vince Molosky seems to like the new venue, though, having won the last three GWTC 30K races. Sheryl Rosen doesn’t seem to mind the Old Centerville Road course either, having won the women’s division of the 30K the last four years. This year expect about a hundred athletes to show their approval for the race by running with another hundred in the associated 15K event.


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Posted by Herb Wills at 5:51 PM
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