Route Of All Evil

Late Saturday afternoon I was just hanging out in my living room when a brightly-dressed runner coming down my street caught my eye. I thought it was a little strange considering it was a cold and rainy day, but I have come to accept that runners are strange people who think nothing of running in poor weather and didn't plan to give it a second thought. However a few seconds later another runner followed them down the street. Then another and another. Suddenly the single runners became packs of four and five. Then came runners pushing those special strollers for people who want to jog and are forcing their children to come along because they are babies and don't have a say in the matter (I at least hope the kids were better dressed for the weather than the runners). The next thing I knew huge groups of people of all shapes and sizes were clogging my street, all either running, jogging or just walking. At first I was mildly concerned something was happening at the other end of the street and started to wonder whether or not I should join in the escape plan, but I finally noticed a numbered bib on one of the people passing by. After a bit of Googling I learned my street was part of a 5K route for a local school trying to raise some money. That would have been a handy piece of information to have a little earlier, don't you think?

Perhaps the most amazing part is that this is not the first time I have been involved in what could best be described as a flash-parade. A couple years ago my father and I were having breakfast at a diner in South Norwood when without warning a small marching band went by, followed by one of those novelty Volkswagen Bugs with a face painted on it and after that came a few hundred Little Leaguers. You see, it was the day of the annual Little League parade in Norwood, one of those events for the kids which has 300 people marching in it and only 10 people watching it. The entire thing lasts for all of 15 minutes, but that doesn't change the fact that on that day it started without much warning. I'm just saying a little signage would have been appreciated, because what if we had needed to be somewhere and suddenly discovered we couldn't go down the central street in the town? You plan for a great many things when going out - hitting traffic, construction, maybe taking back roads - but at no point does the concept of hitting an unadvertised parade come up.

This unannounced road race was sort of the same principle. It is possible that those businesses knew about the Little League parade before it started, but I don't live on a main street and I certainly didn't get any thing in my mailbox telling me that about a hundred people would be running passed late on a Saturday afternoon. Hell, they don't even need to mail me anything - save the stamp by just printing out a few dozen fliers and have volunteers stick them on a few telephone poles. But that isn't even really my big issue with the event. Because while it was kind of inconvenient, the bigger problem is that it also seems very unsafe. What if I needed to run errands and came out of my driveway after just that first guy had passed by? I'd look for another car coming, but seeing one runner going passed is hardly enough of an indicator that I am about to turn into a charging hoard of humanity. Next thing you know I'm on the news being talked about in the same light as those 90 year-olds who forget which pedal is the brake and drive into a farmer's market. As it was I had someplace I needed to be, but lucky for them I wasn't pressed for time to get there and could wait for the throng of people to pass. Even after that, as I was leaving I was paranoid another wave could be coming at any moment. After all, with no sign a race had started I certainly wasn't expecting anything to let me know it had ended.

I'm just starting to wonder if it is too easy to hold things like road races or small parades. Apparently this race happens the first Saturday of every June, but I didn't learn that until I did my Googling, which was well after the race had started. Before we start handing out permits and assigning police details to the major intersections they will be using, how about we make sure the organizers plan to let everyone on the route know what is coming? Perhaps I am just too used to massive events like the 4th of July parade which give you a few days warning, but it certainly seems like this 5K was under-advertised. I'm not trying to compare this with living on the marathon route, because the entire thing lasted 20 minutes, I just think it is odd that I didn't see a single ad in any of the local papers or on the public access TV station in the days leading up to it. (Given that it was for charity you would think they would want to get the word out as best they could.) Going forward, it will be nice knowing when it is happening for future reference, but that does count on my remembering it. Since that is rather unlikely, hopefully next year's planning will include putting up a few reminders along the course.