I have been reminded that I have not written enough about the distances shorter than the marathon. It is true, the distance race I will travel for is the marathon or longer. The only time I have done a shorter race and traveled a bit for it (like 1 hour) was the Gasparilla 15K. However, I realize that there is quite a chunk of the running population that does like to travel and run races that are 5K, 10K, 10 Miler, and Half-Marathon lengths.
As one of the ways to help highlight travel for these races, I am going to begin writing a post each weekend that will highlight some race of a length shorter than the marathon. Most of the races highlighted will be for travel the next weekend or two weekends from the post. These Weekend Dash posts will highlight a race and show some of the ways to get to it and where to stay. Races of that distance are perfect excuses to get away for a day or two and check out a new city on the run but also outside of the race (since the average finishing time for a 10K would be under an hour, it would not consume too much time).
Obviously, I am not highlighting a race for next weekend since it is Thanksgiving weekend (you all should be running your hometown turkey races!) but I did want to give a head’s up about this new series so that readers can begin to check on the weekends for my pick for the following weekends. This could be a really fun way to take-off: fly out (or drive) Friday after work, spend the night in the new city, run the race, spend some time taking in the city and fly back the same day or the next day. One of the really good things about a plan like that is it can still double as a very mini-vacation since most shorter races do not start at the same terrible hours that marathons do! 🙂
I hope you will follow along! I also welcome your suggestions of possible races to include. This will not be the only area where I focus on the shorter distances than a marathon but just one of the ways I work to include more of them into the blog. Let me know what races you would like to see highlighted (unless you don’t want the competition!). You can e-mail me at charlie at runningwithmiles.com or tweet me @runwithmiles. Have a great weekend!
