For the second year in a row, there will be no in-person Oakland Marathon. No runners lining up for the Pittsburgh Marathon. No Eugene marathoners crossing the finish line at Hayward Field. A Part of Hearst Digital Media.
If news from the road racing industry in February 2021 is starting to feel redundant, that’s because a similar spate of cancellations was announced 11 months ago, when the pandemic first hit.
Now many races are being forced to convert to virtual events—A Part of Hearst Digital Media.
“Who would have ever thought, a year later, we would be essentially in the same place?” said Iris Simpson Bush, race director of the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati.
In conversations with Runner’s World, Simpson Bush and race directors of events in Eugene, Oregon, and Oakland, California, which have gone virtual for a second time, voiced frustration and resignation, as they navigate the the limbo of city permits, runners’ expectations, and their own consciences. (Organizers in Pittsburgh declined to comment for this article.)
Want to stay up to date on the latest race information? Sign up with Runner’s World+
Scaling up, if possible
The slow pace of the vaccine rollout Now many races are being forced to convert to.
Flying Pig, for instance, put together a task force that included staff, local medical experts, government officials, and representatives from the running community. They developed a proposal for in-person events in the spring on a small scale—shorter distances and fewer participants—and submitted it to local authorities in early January.
But since the proposal was developed, vaccines haven’t become readily available, casting doubt on their plans.
So Flying Pig has taken an unusual position for its May event: virtual for now, with the hopes of scaling up to an in-person event if conditions change. “As soon as we receive approvals from governing agencies, we will enthusiastically share all the details,” reads a note on the race website. “In the meantime, all Pig Works events are still being offered virtually, with early registrants earning the first option to switch to in-person.”
Simpson Bush said that might mean a fall race, or a smaller event on an enclosed course that doesn’t involve city streets. But the organization feels compelled to try.
“We’ll do whatever size event we can do, and we’ll do the best we can,” she said. “I do feel a responsibility. I know it would be healthy for our running community to get back to doing things in person, and dare I say the larger community, too.”
Organizations have taken a hit financially as the pandemic persists. No staff have been cut at Pig Works, which hosts the events, but everyone on the team has taken a 20 percent pay cut.
“We’ve saved for a rainy day, but we weren’t ready for this many rainy days,” Simpson Bush said.
4 Top-Notch Masks for Runners
Knit Engine Mask and Ear Guard
Should I Be Double-Masking When I Run
Running in the Cold
Should versus could
In Eugene, organizers of the marathon started to worry that their spring event was in jeopardy around Thanksgiving. Planning for the marathon begins at least six months in advance.
“We had given ourselves these soft internal deadlines of when we needed to have different elements underway,” race director Ian Dobson said. “Traffic control, as an example. You can’t just put that together last second. Given that we weren’t entirely sure what facilities would be available at the University of Oregon, we didn’t have a course set. It’s not a short-term process to work through approvals, planning, police and public works, not to mention certification and sanctioning. That doesn’t happen overnight.”
Dobson is one of a full-time team of four staff who weighed various options: restricting entrants by geography, to those within the state or even Lane County, where Eugene is situated; shortening the route to a half marathon; allowing only entrants who could show proof of vaccination; holding the race over three days.
Even though numbers of COVID cases in Oregon have been low compared to other parts of the country, Dobson and his team didn’t want to push it.
“We’ve talked about the differences between the ‘could’ and the ‘should’ a lot as a staff,” he said. “What can we do, what should we do? Ultimately we hope those things are the same. We are comfortable leaning on the should. We don’t think we should do this.”
They announced on February 3 the decision to go virtual for 2021. Now, they’re focusing their efforts on making an in-person race as strong as possible in 2022.
“We want to get back to our core product—a big mass start community road race,” Dobson said, although he anticipates the virtual option would always be part of the Eugene Marathon going forward, as the organization has had more success with virtual racing than they would have imagined.
“We’re not trying to pull one over on anyone here,” he said. “We would much rather have an in-person event, and the vast majority of our participants would, too. But we discovered we can make the best of it.”
Keeping runners engaged
At the Health - Injuries, race director Lena Zentgraf had to pull the plug on the marathon, half, 10K, and 5K last year less than two weeks before the events were supposed to take place the third weekend in March. All the vendors had been paid, the T-shirts and medals purchased for 10,000 runners, and the excitement and anticipation had built throughout the year.
“My heart broke a little bit March 11 when we canceled,” she said.
The event was pushed to August, and then ultimately it went virtual. For 2021, they announced early—in November—that the races would again be virtual only. Even though coronavirus cases are trending downward now, back at the end of 2020 it was impossible to schedule a meeting with the city of Oakland about securing permits for the event, Zentgraf said.
Now they’re working on keeping their runners engaged through another year. “How do we still make it valuable, interact with our customer base, keep our sponsors and all those other stakeholders interested?” she said. “We are bummed, and we don’t want them to lose interest in what we do.”
Another challenge: reaching the new runners who have taken up the sport while gyms were shut down. For almost a year, the primary sports available to Californians have been running, cycling, and surfing, she said. How does the industry capture the new runners?
Corrigan Sports Enterprises, which puts on the Festival, has some diversity in its portfolio: It also stages the Baltimore Marathon in October and puts on lacrosse tournaments that showcase high school athletes for college recruiters, a bulwark against lost race revenue.
And the Oakland event has been a community focal point for 12 years, so Zentgraf feels runners will return when it’s safe. The same might not be true for newer, smaller races that don’t share the same reputation.
For now, the Health - Injuries is avoiding shifting to smaller events. “The fee to shut down the road is the fee to shut down the road, whether two people or 2,000 people run on it,” she said. “Same for permits on parks.”
And small races are not the model they specialize in. “Our industry is getting as many runners as possible to an event, with big visibility to sponsors,” she said. “ A big event gives us leverage with the city. We like the party—we like the size and the feel. We want to do it up.”
Flying Pig Marathon is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World How to Stay Motivated With No Races on the Horizon, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
