While I was visiting my parents a few weeks ago, I participated in my first in-person race since March! The three of us ran the Space Coast Lightfest 5K and I was so looking forward to participating in a race with other runners for the first time in months. On top of that, it was a super festive race, where runners got to see the Space Coast Lightfest displays before anyone else. I spent the entire visit looking forward to this race! Unfortunately, it wasn't the welcome back to in-person racing that I was hoping for, and I'll get into why that is in this review.
In-person racing during a pandemic is inherently risky, due to the fact that there will likely be moments where you're in close proximity to other runners and we're all breathing heavily. However, I think there are definitely ways that you can limit the risk of spreading COVID-19 and still hold in-person races (I think what Millenium Running has been doing has been absolutely fantastic!). I really don't think that the organizers of this race did all that they could do to limit that risk, and I honestly did not feel all that safe, especially in the moments leading up to and the moments after the race.
There was a rolling race start from 6pm to 6:10pm (not that big of a window, but it was a smaller race). Many runners were crowded near the start area as we were waiting for the start line to open up, and I would say a good majority of people were NOT wearing their masks. I'm unsure if this is just a regional attitude thing or what, but I was trying my hardest to stay far away from the folks who were not wearing masks, and it was difficult because there wasn't really anywhere to turn where you would be *right next* to someone without a mask. No one was enforcing this, either, so no one seemed to care.
Around 5:55 or so, pretty much the entire crowd made their way to the start line, all packed in together. The race director allowed folks to just pack in together - without masks - and made folks wait until 6pm to start. So there was this giant crowd of people just hanging around, packed in tight, and totally defeating the purpose of the rolling start. I would say that start idea was a bit of a fail! My parents and I waited a bit for the crowd to disperse before getting started, so we had a bit more room to distance from other runners.
Once we started running we were able to keep our distance pretty well, and we were ready to see some lights and get festive! We ran through this awesome light tunnel they had set up about a half mile into the race which we were really jazzed about. And then.... darkness. This wasn't what I was expecting at all, but after that light tunnel, we didn't see another light display until we were almost to mile 2 of the race! We were pretty surprised by this - given the title of the race and how it was advertised, but we ran about 1.5 miles in the dark which was a total buzzkill. I played some Christmas music on my phone as we ran through the dark to lift our spirits, but we mostly spent the entire first half of the race wondering where the lights were. 😂 Luckily, as we got to about mile 1.75, we finally turned the corner to see the light displays, which we ran through for the remainder of the race. Here's some blurry examples of what they looked like (they're actually really cool displays, lights are just hard to photograph clearly as you're running by them!):
Of course, this last mile or so of the race was the most fun and I really enjoyed that part. It was so fun to point out all of the different themes of the light displays and just enjoy the holiday festiveness as we strolled through the park. We walked most of this portion of the course so we could all enjoy the lights together. Luckily, because we took our time with the later part of the race, the finish line was pretty clear of people, so we were able to take our time coming through the finish area.
Another really big red flag when it came to COVID safety was that after you exited the finish area was a row of horse stables which were converted into these festive Christmas scenes for folks to take photos with. A great idea in theory, but again, nearly no one was wearing masks and they were ALL piling into these tiny stables to get photos. I'm unsure if these scenes were set up by the race organizers, but it still was not a great situation and an additional thing that made me feel unsafe.
Overall, I'd give this race about a 3 out of 10. That's probably a bit brutal, and I may have rated it higher if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic, but the fact that I did not feel all that safe and felt that the race organizers basically had zero plan on managing the crowd in a way that would help limit the risk of spreading COVID-19. That's a HUGE red flag to me. Again, maybe this is a regional thing, or maybe this is just how races are right now, but honestly it felt like there was no plan which was really disappointing. Runner safety - especially during a pandemic - should be priority #1 and it just didn't feel that way to me.
I'll be running two more races in Florida in a couple of weeks so I'm wondering if that experience will be similar or not. Fingers crossed that it isn't!
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