Races are back!

I can’t believe it’s been 2 years.

“The St Pats RunFest” was happening on March 14th and 15th of 2020. The Four courts Four miler and The St. Patrick’s Day 10k - 2 Pacers Running Races in Arlington and DC. I remember being so pumped to run both of them. I was not alone. We had a record number of sign-ups.

We pride ourselves on never having to cancel races. The only one I can remember was the 2019 Crystal City Twilighter because of the heat (https://www.arlnow.com/2019/07/19/crystal-city-twilighter-race-cancelled-due-to-heat/)

We run, rain or shine…

But this was different. Customers, employees, and all our runners were on edge. This “Coronavirus” was here. We didn’t know what to do.

Earlier in the week, Lisa Reeves (Senior Race Director at Pacers) was working the phones with multiple Jurisdictions in both Arlington and DC about both races. It became clear that gathering thousands of people together with much uncertainty was not the right thing to do. Lisa and all our partners on these races made the tough decision to cancel the “RunFest”.

It was the right decision. But we had no idea what a long road we were looking at for our events team. I remember having conversations about being back in a matter of weeks. It all seems so crazy to look back on it now.

We’ve had a few races over the past 2 years. But it’s been literally just a few. No races in our calendar had gone off on their regularly scheduled times, until yesterday. Two long years after Lisa and crew made the tough decision to pause races, we were back - The Four Courts Four Miler on a Saturday in March.

It didn’t matter that the numbers were lower than normal because it snowed. We were back. Two years later - the Leprechaun was chasing runners up Wilson Blvd and Dave and his staff at Four Courts were pouring pints post-run. And boy did it feel good.