169 Towns #53: Monroe

September 10th, 2017 · No Comments

#53 Monroe: Chasing Ciara's Light 5K

Before the race began, I was standing around with another group of 169 club runners, talking about previous races, and particular, about that race a few months back that was poorly marked enough for a bunch of us to end up running neither the short distance nor the long distance, but something in between, because we followed a mixture of both courses. Surely, a screwup of that nature, with poorly marked directions and people not knowing where they were going, couldn’t happen again…

Flash forward to the start. We had just watched the kids race do a loop around the parking lot, and after lining up at the start line, the entire pack of 100+ runners took off and started running around that same parking lot, in the opposite direction. Not 10 seconds into the race, I heard someone shouting, “You’re going the wrong way! Turn this way!” It took a second to understand that they were talking to all of us, not just one or two people who had gone the wrong way, and I quickly did an about face, ran over a grassy median and through some bushes, and off onto the trail that they had intended, but not exactly marked, for us to go on.

I couldn’t tell exactly where I was with regard to other runners, because not only did we have the course confusion, but we also had two different distances running sometimes on the same course, sometimes not. But after another moment where two volunteers had arrows pointing in two different directions at a single intersection, I settled in and enjoyed the trail course. At a certain point, I and other runners near me noticed a heavily marked route doubling back, heading off to our right, but with no arrows pointing and no volunteers around it wasn’t clear if we should be going there at this point, or if we would eventually hit that before heading into the finish. I saw runners ahead of me, and followed after them, until I actually saw someone who I knew was ahead of me running back towards us, and we all started talking about how we didn’t know where we were going. We kept running out on this long, straight road, until we realize that it was leading us towards the exit of the park, at which point we decided that this was probably not the right direction, and that we should just turn around. As we did, the hundred or so other participants of the race were all running toward us, and we had to tell them to turn around, and that we didn’t know where we were going. Once we got back to the junction and saw the heavily marked trail heading to our left, we were told to take it. Why there hadn’t been any race volunteer to tell us to turn there originally, I don’t know.

I have never been in a race that felt this much like a circus, with absolutely no one knowing where they should be going, and no help from any volunteers. I eventually ran out to the turnaround, which was well marked and volunteered, and headed back in to the finish line. As I headed in, I heard an announcer announcing the runners who were finishing, and I realized as I got closer, that there was only one runner ahead of me. As I headed into the chute, I heard the announcer say “And in second place…” This didn’t make sense, because it was supposed to be a 5K and my watch read somewhere around 32 minutes, but the whole thing was such a mess no one knew what to make of it. My disappointment at the confusion of the race turned to amusement and disbelief, as I somehow finished in second overall, to a 13-year-old, in a 5K that was actually more like 4 miles.

The timing company staff asked us how they should rank runners, but it was clear that pretty much no one ran the same distance as anyone else. We all turned around at different points, and it was going to be impossible to determine places. I was followed in the men’s division by a 50 something-year-old guy, and the winner of the women’s race was in her 70s, so the whole thing was a memorable mess.

Chasing Ciara’s Light 5K | 5K (4 miles) | 9/9/17 | 31:33 | 53/169

Tags: New Haven · Running