I'm not quite sure how to start this one. I'm trying to put everything into perspective.
Due to events over the last few days, I see some things with new eyes. Jaded eyes. I'm pretty disappointed in how things turned out, but I'm going to think about it before I put thoughts about those events into words. In fact, I might not ever share those bad feelings on the web for everyone to see. One person, whose opinion I value, said to spread the word, let everyone know. But I'm not sure.
At the same time, after today I'm very excited! I am so proud of the Fleet Feet walkers! They were fantastic! I watched the Columbus Distance Classic as a course monitor today and saw most of the women who trained with me and many of my Buckeye Strider buddies. They were great. And that Weight Watchers group was very inspiring!They all looked strong and seemed to have a good time. Congratulations to all of you!
In fact, all of the walkers seemed to have a good time. It was really fun watching people who had worked so hard successfully complete this event! A half marathon is not an easy undertaking. It takes training, perseverance and TIME! It was obvious these athletes had put in the time and the training.
For this reason alone, I am very proud to have been associated with this race. I smiled the whole time watching people go by. Seeing so many athletes enjoying this type of healthy endeavor is very inspiring. It was especially inspiring to meet and then watch people that were entering their first race of this distance.
And seeing these people have such a good time made me realize that sometimes it's just about the walking. Sometimes you don't need to know "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey says.
So, thank you everyone who walked this event. You have made my day! I had a wonderful time watching you and you inspired me to do my best next weekend in Xenia!
PS: I saw over 30 people with walker numbers blatantly running. It took 3 of 6 course monitors seeing a person run to have them moved to the runner results. I know there are a couple "runners" we missed. Maybe with a few more monitors... Regardless, there were about 6 people who should have signed up as runners. It will be interesting to see what the race does with those results. And those of you who walked the entire distance, I'm sorry we didn't catch all of the runners. We did our best!
2 comments:
I have shared the article on Common Sense Judging from the Spring issue with some people around here who are equally concerned about the number of "walkers" who run. One thought is to put the CSJ rules on the application and issue a statement before the start of the race that walkers are to walk the entire route. Perhaps raising awareness and alerting participants to the fact that they will be watched during the race will deter some from "cheating" those of us who truly train to compete as walkers from our rightful places in the final results.
I know Larry, but the rules we established said that 3 separate monitors needed to see someone running to move them to the running division. Unfortunately, we had only 2 monitors catch them. We talked about it and decided we needed to stick by the rules we established.
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