Topic: athletic events

I’m not always on top of my weekly running (as in: I haven’t consistently trained in months), but I still like to sign up for races. I can always get through five kilometers in exchange for a t-shirt and post-race brunch, especially if it involves a reasonable start time. But a recent race caught my eye that seemed both genius and a little disturbing: The New York Road Runner’s Japan Day Run for Hope sounded like a good excuse to run beyond my proclivity for Manhattan brunch: The short, four-mile run is being held to raise funds for Red Cross efforts in Japan (and you even get credit towards qualifying for the New York Marathon, if you’re crazy enough to care about that). But upon close inspection for race dates and rules, I realized that this was a “virtual run” — you sign up, send the money, and do the run whenever and wherever you want, then send your “results” using Map My Run to see how you would have placed among live participants. This could be the next big running trend, but I have mixed feelings: Aren’t we leaving out something important by running together only in theory? More »