There were several July 4th races in central Ohio this year.

Three Buckeye Striders and I entered the Westerville Rotary July 4th 5K.

The race is reasonably priced at $25. This year we received a technical shirt in men’s sizes and a Headsweats visor. Let me just say for the record that unisex sizing is just a nice way of saying, “We are only offering men’s sizes, but we are trying to be less obvious about it.” Unisex is a man’s size — the end.

That said, the shirts are HUGE! A small is VERY large and they are fluorescent yellow with a red, white and blue design. Eww. Headsweats is a great brand, but the visors just look weird on nearly everyone I saw wear them. My hair makes it pop off my head.

This is a community event, and the people are all very nice. It has a small town feel to it that I really like.

The course runs down one large street, then when the crowds thin, it moves to bike trails. It’s nice, but also the exact same course as the Easter race.

There were two water stops that were woefully understaffed. Each had two people and they could not keep up. I skipped the first one as people were waiting in line. At the second one, I still had to wait for water, but it was not more than about 10 seconds.

In previous years, there would be maybe 10 Buckeye Striders in this race. This year we had only four. Another local race not only had gender-specific shirts, but also had a walking division! In the past, several of my friends in higher age groups have won their division as walkers in Westerville. This year the highest age group was only 50+. That is a very young and huge age group!

After the race, there was plenty of water, Cheryl’s cookies, Panera bagels and bananas and oranges.

Because of the new age divisions, we did not stick around for awards.

Nancy and I tied with a finish time of 43:58 (I won because my name is first alphabetically), Pat finished in 44:02 and Deb in 44:13. We placed 59th, 60th, 61st and 62nd in our age division.

Overall, it was not a bad race. However, if other races are willing to offer better shirts and a walking division, why would I come back here next year? In fact, we did agree that this is probably our last year doing this event. For just $5 more we could do a similar race, receive a shirt we can actually wear and possibly receive an award for walking.

 

(961)