Turkey Trotting In COVID
I wish I had something more optimistic to report about the only race my team has gone to in COVID…but I don’t. I wish I was able to proclaim how wrong I was, that races were safe and protocols followed. I wish I could see a return to how races used to be.
But I can’t.
My teammates and I decided to try out a 5 mile small Turkey Trot last Saturday in a very small town about an hour away from us. We all drove separately. The precautions outlined by the race seemed like enough:
At the Packet Pick Up area…
Please wear a face covering
Get to PPU area not sooner than 20 min. prior to your start time.
At the start line…
Make your way to the start line just before the start time.
Please wear a face covering and social distance until the race begins.
Once you start running and are apart from other runners you can remove your face covering
The RD did not ever have his mask on. Based on the flags flying around town, I can see why he would disregard the rules of a global pandemic. However, he was nice enough and most other people did wear their masks. At the start line, the wave wasn’t managed at all. If we didn’t take initiative to ask people to space out and do it ourselves, the race staff wasn’t going to do it for us. The starting coral was too small for the amount of people in the wave with zero organization.
Post race, we asked the RD to take our picture, as he wanted to chat with us because we we’re the “fast women from Ithaca”. We had simply emailed him before the race to ask to put the fast people in our wave so we could run fast. Upon handing him my phone, he took our picture then proceeded to get way too close to me after I asked if he’d zoom in the photo. He was almost touching me, it was very inappropriate. He then told us we could take our masks off for the photo (he still did not have his on. He never did).
It was very awkward and we left really shortly after that. I was really disappointed. I wanted to feel safe and write a glowing review. I believed that since the RD bragged they’d been having races since July, they had a system down and it would be an excellent display of COVID protocol.
No, it was an example of why cases are rising across the US.
It was an example of irresponsibility.
It was another reason I believe most races shouldn’t be happening right now.
It was glaringly obvious that without formal regulations from a governing body, runners and races will not make the right decisions.
Having races unfortunately has encouraged people to believe this pandemic is over. It’s not over, not even close. I just don’t believe we can get through this crisis unless we’re all in this together. I don’t think it’s a good idea for some states or counties to have races while others cannot. I think it encourages unwise travel and behavior. I think it makes otherwise smart people do dumb things. I think people see their friends and family racing and they tell themselves that their irresponsible behavior is “ok because she did that…so I can do this.”
It’s not ok.
Get your head out of your ass. Be selfish and keep seeing our fellow citizens die.
We’re at 1500 deaths a day and climbing.
How many deaths are enough for you?
