Susan Rancourt

Bristol Independence Rhode Race

July 7, 2015
, Events

Well – this event did not come out as I hoped but it was still an incredible day! MONTHS of planning, running, and re-running potential courses, lining up vendors, marketing, t-shirts, medals, promotion – and a torrential storm was looking to undo it all. But it ended up being a FUN event because everyone felt they were all in it together!

I was SO EXCITED for this race. The half marathon is my favorite distance and I always wanted a good local one. I wanted to show off Bristol, not just Colt State Park! And when is Bristol most beautiful – the 4th of July! The sailboats in the harbor, the striped center line, the quaint houses dressed in flags. Color and architecture abound.

When thinking about the course, I looked at some of the races that I liked: Bristol used to have a 10 miler in November that I loved – it ran along High and Thames St plus Colt State Park but is no longer around. The 5 mi Hangover classic in January is one of my FAVORITE races – no better way to start the new year than with a COLD race with the BEST trophies! But up and down Poppasquash through Colt State Park – you are really too cold to appreciate it. I think my eyelashes freeze shut on the run along the water when on Colt Dr. The half marathon in Colt State Park in November is just loops – no thanks!

Who gets to drink all the beer they use for their AG trophies?

So I designed the course using all my favorite parts of Bristol – start and finish right downtown in Independence Park, on the water. I used some of the parade route, some of the neighborhoods, the Town Common, America’s Cup Museum, and Colt State Park. Runners need cool things to look at to take their minds off the pain and agony going on below. This course had views aplenty!

Then the weather reports start coming in. Not just rain but torrential rain and potentially severe thunderstorms. ?The emails start flooding in (see what I did there….). My beautiful race…. being washed away. This has been the year of bad weather for race directors – due to snow piles being too high for the roads to be safe, thunderstorms, and blizzards. Not a good thing for business.

The police recommended we cancel. The runners wanted a delay. Neither was really a good option. Many people plan their race calendars out months in advance. They rely on certain benchmarks or goal races. Plus – rescheduling a race is so hard; vendors, volunteers, police, runners – we all plan on THIS ONE DAY. As far as a delay – well then you run the risk of the storm arriving later, and sticking around longer. Add to that the summer traffic in Bristol once the day gets going – it just isn’t safe.

So I call on the big guys – Fred Campagna and Mark Searles. Both local meteorologists, friends and both running the race. Not only can these two speak best about what race day weather would look like, but they also understand the ramifications of the decisions. We hashed it out for a while but essentially the threat of thunderstorms was equal between 6 am and noon. Delaying the start would be a worse alternative. Canceling – LAST CHOICE. We were going to line up at 6:30 as planned, Mark and Fred would check the radar and let me know if we had a 3-hour window to run or if we needed to delay until we did.

This race hurt. Blisters on my toes and heels.

We, runners, pride ourselves on the suffering score. After all, running is 90% mental – anyone can run, it takes the mentally tough to run more than a half mile. I trained for Boston in the floods of 2010, I had qualified the day it had snowed in October. I have racing flats that I kept because they still had bits and pieces of my skin from the blisters incurred in a race. We love to brag about running, but no more so than when we overcome especially harsh conditions! And this race is going to be all of that!

So 3 am wake up and we start prepping the course. SERIOUS wind and rain. Cone guys are out, I am trying to set up mile markers in torrential winds and rain and they just won’t stay up. At one point I grabbed an A-frame from the truck and thought it was going to sail me away! 6a – Cones are up, mile markers are up, aid stations are dropped and most volunteers are on course.

People like Bryan Ganley made this event fun!

Back to the start – they are ready to go but then the fire chief said “Have you checked the high tide time? We could have some serious flooding on Poppasquash!” So now the race is a duathlon! Run/Swim/Run 🙂 On the bright side, the rain and wind seem to be lessening. ?We find Mark and Fred and they give us the go-ahead – as good as it is going to get. We start the race at 6:31a – our most on-time start yet!

So yeah, it was rainy and it was windy but it wasn’t terrible. ?We had lost about 200-300 people who had registered but didn’t bother showing up that morning but those that did – WOW! They loved the race, loved the course, and felt such a HUGE sense of accomplishment racing in those conditions. And they should! Every single person who lined up on that start probably had serious doubts and wanted to give in to do the easier thing – sleep late, stay warm in bed, and not push your body through 13 miles of wet pain.

But they didn’t! I was so proud to bring this race to hundreds of people but I was more proud of the hundreds of people that raced in those conditions. I was happy we didn’t cancel or delay – we all fought through and we all came out the other side that much mentally stronger!