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Published: Apr 24, 2020 10:03 AM EDT coronavirus pandemic, runners are wondering how road races fit into something resembling normal life. When will my next local race be? How can hundreds or thousands of us gather in one spot? Will I have to Health - Injuries? Do I have to prove that I don’t have the virus? What about the fall marathon season?
The short answer to those and related questions is: Nobody knows.
What’s “normal” during this pandemic changes almost daily, including the ever-growing pileup of canceled or postponed races. “At first, it was, ‘I hope races come back by June,’” says Bill Teschek, manager of The Best 13 Face Masks for Runners, about conversations with other race workers. “Then it was July, then August. It seems like the longer it goes on, the more pessimistic everybody gets.”
At some point, however, racing will return. Just acknowledging that is helpful, says Kaitlin Goodman, a 2:32 marathoner and public health consultant. “An important part of public health messaging is hope,” she says. “Be honest and open with the data, but don’t make people more anxious.”
Here, then, based on interviews with several running insiders, are ideas about what the near future of road racing might look like.
A Tricky Timeline
in-depth coronavirus coverage. Do Expired COVID Tests Work, all but five states had issued restrictions on business and travel, and federal guidelines continued to advise against gatherings of more than 10 people. The New York Road Runners (NYRR) has canceled all in-person events through at least the end of June. Most other late spring races have also been canceled or postponed.
Road races, with people packed tightly together, are obvious occasions for virus transmission. That’s true even of small races while we lack widespread testing and contact tracing, and a vaccine is believed to be at least a year off. Bigger races that How to Respect Social Distancing on Crowded Trails are especially dangerous. “Any event where you have people coming in from different places and then dispersing is a classic set-up for disseminating an infection,” says Stephen Morse, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Columbia University.
We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article for reopening of society emphasize making decisions based on local conditions. The guidelines lay out three phases for loosening restrictions on travel and gatherings, based on “gating criteria.” Even in phase 2, the guidelines say, “Social settings of more than 50 people, where appropriate distancing may not be practical, should be avoided unless precautionary measures are observed.” To reach phase 2, a state or region is to have twice met the gating criteria, which include a downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period. Again, these are non-binding guidelines, and races are thinking about how to build in precautionary measures for distancing. Still, many areas aren’t close to having two 14-day periods of declining case numbers.
As with normal life in general, all of road racing won’t suddenly reappear everywhere at once. Cities where early cases were clustered, such as Seattle, Boston, and an RRCA survey, could have a higher percentage of the population with immunity than rural areas. In the latter, “it might take only two cases, especially if people aren’t being conscious about social distancing, to overwhelm the hospital system,” says Megan Roche, M.D., a five-time national trail running champion and a Ph.D. candidate in epidemiology.
On a practical level, returning to racing can’t happen overnight. A race held on public roads or in a public park needs a permit from local government. Applying for permits can take days or weeks even in normal times and could conceivably take longer when governments are focused on other aspects of pandemic response.
Race organizers offer widely varying guesses about when their first event back might be. Steve Lastoe of NYCRUNS, which puts on 30 races in the an RRCA survey area, says early summer. “My sense of things is that it’s going to be a very proactive process—we think the city is aware that events have to happen,” he says.
Sean M. Haffey As of late April in Pennsylvania, assumes the club’s June races will be canceled. breathing, spitting, snot rocketing Pacers Running, which puts on 60 races a year in the Washington, D.C., area, says she’s focusing on an August race. Teschek of Granite State thinks the next race he might time will be a high school cross-country meet in the fall.
There’s more consensus that races in late fall will happen. “We’re going to prepare like’s it going to happen on November 21,” Mike Spinnler, race director of the JFK 50 Mile in Maryland, says about this year’s race.
an RRCA survey an RRCA survey Marathon, scheduled for November 1, NYRR spokesperson Chris Weiller says, “It’s such an evolving situation, it’s tough to predict where it’s going. We’re planning on the marathon right now.”
Roche points out that the medical guidance is changing quickly and scientists still don’t know all the ways the COVID-19 spreads.
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Who Decides?
Race organizers say they’ll take their cues for when racing can resume from local governments—mayor’s offices, town councils, parks and recreation departments, and police departments.
“There’s not going to be one universal decree,” Dalby says. Some towns and cities might welcome the economic impact and sense of community a race brings, while others with a similar coronavirus case load might view a race as an unwelcome drain on local resources.
There could be cases where a municipality says it’s okay for racing to resume, but a given race might still not happen. “The consumer will tell us what they’re comfortable doing, as will our staff and medical team,” Dalby says. David Backer, board president of the Beach to Beacon 10K in Maine, says that medical workers who are currently working around the clock might value personal time more than volunteering for a weekend race once case numbers drop in their area.
There are also race-specific factors to consider. Beach to Beacon is a point-to-point course that starts on a two-lane road in an area with a handful of parking spots. The race encourages runners to get to the start on one of the school buses it provides for that purpose. The Boston and an RRCA survey marathons also shuttle tightly packed entrants to the start. Their usual approach seems impossible to implement this fall, even if some social distancing protocols have been relaxed.
Or consider the Mount Washington Road Race, a 7.6-mile climb to the highest elevation in New England. Runners wait at the summit for the last finisher, and then carpool down the narrow auto road to the start. The race, scheduled for June 20, has a back-up date of August 22. The early arrival of winter in New Hampshire’s White Mountains means the race can’t be repeatedly postponed. “In November, it’d be a snowshoe race,” Teschek says.
Bigger races might cancel earlier because of all that’s involved in putting them on. As reported by Japan Running News, two Japanese marathons scheduled for October canceled in late March and early April. Race organizers cited not only concern about virus transmission, but also the economic impact the pandemic has had on race sponsors, thereby making the race unfeasible from an organizational standpoint.
The Beach to Beacon board gave itself a May 15 deadline to decide about this year’s race, scheduled for August 1. That amount of advance notice feels fair to runners, vendors, medical workers, and the 800 volunteers the race usually has, says Backer. But deciding so far in advance means having to guess what society will look like in more than three months, when most of us have no idea what next week might hold. (Editor’s note: The race’s cancellation was announced on April 29.)
Who Goes First?
Everyone agrees that small races will resume first. That’s the case not only because of however social distancing guidelines might evolve, but from a practical standpoint. “I think the 300-person 5K is going to be first because it’s the easiest to execute,” Dalby says. Lastoe says he could pull off a small 5K or 10K with a one- or two-week notice, but would need more like a month for a larger, longer race.
What are usually small races might need to cap registration to ensure they stay that way. It’s conceivable that a typical 100-person community race could be flooded with runners who live an hour away if it’s the only event in the region for the foreseeable future.
For bigger races, “we’re all looking for someone bigger to go in front of us,” Dalby says. Everyone is watching what happens with the Boston Marathon, which was postponed from its original date of April 20 to September 14. When the postponement was announced on March 13, mid-September seemed far away. But as society has become more, not less, restricted since then, a 30,000-person race feels impossible to some.
“If in the fall we’re still being told to stay six feet apart, I don’t see how you can hold a race of any real size,” says Spinnler, whose 50-miler usually has about 1,000 finishers.
What Might Races Look Like?
Race organizers are considering all sorts of changes to their usual operations to account for the coronavirus, including areas like the starting corral when it comes to proper social distancing. “To be honest, I don’t think we have all the answers to questions about contagiousness yet,” Lastoe says. Here’s some of what’s being discussed:
Pre-race and start:
“I think the basic idea will be to expand both space and time,” Lastoe says. “You allow more time for number pickup, you allow more time for the event to happen, and you allow more space for both of these things to happen.” For a 1,500-person race, he says, number pickup might occur over two days instead of four to six hours.
Few anticipate making runners prove they’re free of infection, via the results of a coronavirus or antibody test. Lastoe says he might take entrants’ temperatures before they can access the start. But that measure raises both logistical issues, such as the space needed to efficiently do hundreds of checks while maintaining distance, and medical ones, given that runners could have the virus but be asymptomatic.
Everyone anticipates alterations to traditional starts. While nobody expects thousands of runners to line up at once in the fall of 2020, a thought experiment done by Popular Mechanics before the Los Angeles Marathon in March is still instructive. It estimated that if the field of 19,000 were to maintain a six-feet distance from each other, the start line on the four-lane road where the race begins would need to extend 3.77 miles.
Race organizers are mostly considering having several small start waves, or a rolling start, in which entrants would have, say, a one-hour window in which to start. These changes would allow a race of a few hundred people to be held even if gatherings of more than 50 people are still discouraged, because each wave could be considered its own gathering. “If you can’t start more than 50 people at once, at some point races of a certain size aren’t feasible,” Teschek says.
Even when bigger waves become possible, there’s still a physical limit on the size of races. After all, if you want to put on a 1,000-person race in waves of 200, where do the remaining 800 runners safely wait while the first wave is at the start? “You definitely have situations where you’re limited by your staging area,” Dalby says. “Is the solution going to be multiple corrals, different start lines, different start times? I think we’re all still trying to figure that out.”
During the race:
It’s one thing to figure out how to keep runners a safe distance apart at the start. It’s another to do so throughout the race.
First, there’s the simple matter of space. As many of us have learned in recent weeks, you need a lot of room to run while always being at least six feet from others. Second, there’s the issue of how many of us race. We form packs, we draft, we try to latch on to the shoulder of the person who passes us with half a mile to go. And, of course, our output—breathing, spitting, snot rocketing—tends to increase the faster we run. “All the things we’re not supposed to be doing because of the virus happen all the time in races,” Billowitch says.
Race organizers are wary about enforcing social distancing during an event. Lastoe says, “People running together, especially with friends, is very hard to discourage. That might be the part of the prerace speech where you have to raise your voice to make your point.”
Roche says races should offer guidelines on how to pass. “There’s going to be lingering fear for a long time for a number of runners even when we transition to a safer time,” she says. “Something that can help is announcing yourself from a long distance away before you pass.”
Goodman says that smaller waves could inspire fresh takes on racing. “Maybe it’s more competing with yourself than duking it out with somebody right next to you,” she says. “Maybe there’s a new piece of competition where you’re trying to run up on the waves in front of you, and maybe they have different bib colors. The same way that we’re adapting our training to maintain social distancing, we can take some of those practices and apply them to a race setting.”
The other big during-the-race question: What about aid stations?
As with the start (and pretty much everything else), race organizers are still thinking this through. The last race Lastoe put on was a 5K/10K on March 8, when coronavirus was starting to become Topic A in an RRCA survey. He made the water stations two to three times longer than usual to encourage less crowding. That model is being widely considered.
What’s on those tables is also under discussion. Grabbing a cup from a volunteer is unlikely. Some organizers are considering sealed bottled water, but that approach has drawbacks in an industry that’s also trying to be environmentally responsible. Races might also temporarily do away with aid stations and tell runners to carry their own sustenance. Then again, not offering water can be a liability issue in hot weather, according to Jean Knaack, president of the Road Runners Club of America (RRCA).
Post-race:
“There are times you want the runners to leave soon after they finish, and this would certainly qualify for that,” Lastoe says. Don’t expect postrace beer gardens or other festival-type offerings when racing first returns. Races with medals might mail them, or perhaps have them hanging to be grabbed on your way out. Any food will be prepackaged.
In general, there will be few of the frills that have become expected from a standard road race. “It might look like running back in the ’70s and ’80s,” Knaack says. “Hopefully the clothes will look better.”
When Will Runners Feel Safe?
If you hold it, will they come? When Runner’s World asked on Twitter what runners would need to see to feel safe racing, responses ranged from “a date and a time” to “maybe when most people have received the vaccine,” with most between those extremes.
In a survey of 3,500 runners spearheaded by Lastoe, 83 percent said they would be comfortable participating in a race “only when” (51 percent) or “a while after” (32 percent) social distancing is no longer recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Seventy-six percent said they’d be okay with racing only when or a while after new cases of COVID-19 are sporadic in their area, and 61 percent said only when or a while after rapid testing is widely available.
for more amazing Runners World workouts an RRCA survey found that runners will initially be most comfortable with races of 100 or fewer entrants.
Olympic marathoner Jared Ward is planning to run one of the three U.S. major marathons (Boston, Chicago, an RRCA survey) scheduled for the fall. “Thinking about standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a stranger or someone outside of my wife and kids is a weird thought right now,” he says. “But I’m ready as soon as the governments and health organizations decide it’s time.”
Goodman is also planning to do a fall marathon but says it will be one she can reasonably drive to from her home in Providence, Rhode Island, to lower infection risks while traveling. “My motive, though, is a little different, because this is my profession,” she says. “If you’re a Boston qualifier in your 60s and in a higher risk category, when you’re willing to come back might be different from mine.”
This year’s national cross-country champion, Natosha Rogers, hopes to be able to run many road races in the fall to make up for lost income. If a race told her to maintain distance from her competitors, “I would probably struggle with it, as most of us would, because that’s completely foreign,” she says. “It’s not exactly a true race running like that. But our world is in a very strange spot right now, and we’re having to do a lot of things differently to ensure each other’s safety.”
How Soon Is Too Soon?
Most runners know the difference between being able to do something and doing that something being the best choice. You might be able to run with a swollen Achilles tendon, or double last week’s mileage, but you’re probably better off doing otherwise. Similarly, some insiders stress there’s a difference between when races can return and when they should return.
“Who wants to put themselves in harm’s way for a road race?” asks Beach to Beacon’s Backer. “Nobody, I hope, nor would we want somebody to.”
Roche says, “Rushing to hold races immediately once restrictions lift is a little bit risky. That’s putting together a lot of people who have potentially asymptomatic cases together.” Roche would prefer that race directors wait to see what happens as other social gatherings, such as restaurants and farmers markets, start to reemerge. “If we have to take people’s temperatures on a mass level before starting a race, it’s probably too soon to be holding a race,” she says.
The same could arguably be said for suggestions such as requiring entrants to wear a face mask when checking in, waiting to start, passing other runners, and after finishing, one of the recommendations for early-return races in You Might Be Slower Soon After a COVID Booster created by RunSignUp and shared among industry figures.
Another potential sign of a premature return is if changes too greatly alter the nature of a race. The As of late April hold free monthly 5Ks on a multiuse trail in Allentown. The path is six feet wide, which could make holding even a 100-person race challenging, Billowitch says. “If we’re starting six or 10 people at a time, and we’re telling people they can’t run with their friends, at some point we’d have to decide if it’s worth it,” she says. Teschek concurs, asking, “If it’s one person starts at a time, and run by yourself, and then go home, what’s the point?”
Knaack is worried that a rush to resume racing could harm running’s reputation. “You don’t want a race to become a contagion cluster,” she says. “It’s like the cruise industry. Their reputation is destroyed right now. We don’t want that to happen in the running industry if it’s too much, too soon.”
Knaack says big races like Boston and an RRCA survey will be prudent about whether to run this fall. Spinnler says his 50-miler has a one-year emergency fund and could financially survive having to cancel in November. Knaack is concerned about midsize events. “It’s more your 500- to 1,000-person race, if we don’t go, we don’t survive,” she says. “Forcing something for a short-term gain could have significant impacts long term.”
The Road Ahead
Whatever races occur the rest of 2020 won’t look like their 2019 version. But multiple small wave starts and a course that looks like a medical facility probably won’t become permanent features, most insiders agree. “A lot of what we did after 9/11 and the Boston bombings has eased up,” Spinnler says. “Things might be different for a year or two, but not all of what we do will stick.”
Perhaps the more permanent change will be in something less tangible. Injured runners know how having something taken away from you can make you appreciate it more. “Any opportunity to race right now sounds amazing,” Rogers says.
“I think this whole required pause is somewhat kismet,” Dalby says. “Now we really need to look at what running means and where we want it to go. I think we’re going to see a lot of good things come out of that.”
—which puts on 30 races in the New York City area, says.
Scott is a veteran running, fitness, and health journalist who has held senior editorial positions at Runner’s World and Running Times. Much of his writing translates sport science research and elite best practices into practical guidance for everyday athletes. He is the author or coauthor of several running books, including found that runners will initially be most comfortable with races of 100 or fewer entrants, Advanced Marathoning, and Meb for Mortals. Scott has also written about running for Slate, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and other members of the sedentary media. His lifetime running odometer is past 110,000 miles, but he’s as much in love as ever.
