Will running return to January? Local 'Recover From the Holidays' race needs new leaders
This past Sunday morning so many runners likely had an internal debate as to how they should dress for a run, how far they should run — or even if they should run outside — in the bitter, winter cold. The air temperature was near zero and the wind chill was below zero in places. The dreaded treadmill seems like a good option, indeed, on days like that.
The previous Sunday morning, the choice was much simpler and starker: It was either the treadmill, or if runners were forward-thinking enough, move their usual Sunday jaunt to Saturday. That’s because last Sunday morning, the area was pelted with a nasty ice storm. It doesn’t matter how tough a runner you are; icy conditions are the ultimate foe.
Look, these types of conditions don’t exactly constitute a breaking news alert. It’s January; it’s the Mid Hudson Valley. This is what happens around here. Runners have learned to cope with these conditions for decades.
These challenging conditions for outdoor exercise on a weekend morning were met with a bit of melancholy — for me and perhaps for my good (old) friend, Charlie Sprauer of Pleasant Valley. That’s because since January 1996, we have joined forces to host the Mid-Hudson Road Runners Club’s Recover From the Holidays 50-kilometer ultramarathon from Norrie Point in Staatsburg.
40 miles before the ball dropped: Two local runners spent New Year's Eve running to NYC
Trouble keeping your resolution? This Poughkeepsie man has run each day for 9 years
Breakfast runs, night runs, 62-mile runs: 2022 local running calendar has range of options
Obviously, it wasn’t held last January; few, if any, organized running events were going on a year ago, in the teeth of the pandemic. And there were two years — 2003 (massive snowstorm) and 2018 (heavy snow and ice storm) — where we had to postpone or cancel the event due to extreme winter weather that precluded us from even getting to the park.
Other than that, we’d be manning our start-finish area down by the usually frozen Hudson River. Back in the late summer and fall of 1995, we mapped out a pretty neat out-and-back loop from Norrie Point. The concept was simple. Run the out-and-back 5km loop as many times as you can, up to 10 times, which equals a 50-kilometer (31-mile) ultramarathon.
At first, friends and acquaintances thought this was a dubious idea. Do the same loop, 10 times in a row? How boring! The scenery will get stale! It’s hilly! It might be icy, snowy, cold! We heard it all. Most of the observations were accurate.
And you know what? People kept showing up; some years more than 100 runners would come out. Boring? Runners loved being able to see their fellow runners on every loop. The fastest, national-caliber ultra runners at the front of the pack could high-five with the walk/run slowpokes who were out there all morning and afternoon. It became a little running village for about eight hours every January.
Emails and calls came from ultra runners in New York City, Long Island, the Capital District, southern New England. They wanted to know about this race. Word-of-mouth was good. So was the entry fee — $0. That’s right. It was a free race. We never charged an entry fee.
Because we are slow learners, it took us two decades before one of us came up with the idea of building and keeping a roaring fire pit throughout the day. While this served to keep the intrepid lap counters (Charlie and me) warm, it also became a social magnet.
After runners were done with their loops, they would hang out by the fire for 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes more. Around halfway through the day, Charlie would order a bunch of pizzas. Hungry runners would voraciously gobble down the slices, grateful for the nourishment.
“So many crazy memories,’’ Charlie recalled. “The thing I remember about it, it was all automatic. We worried about snow and ice all the time. There was good times and bad times, it was tough work sometimes, 8-10 hours, preparing the day before and wondering why we did it, then one person would thank us, and it was worth it.’’
Our last race, in 2020, was certainly memorable. An unseasonably warm, record-breaking January day, it was sunny and mild with no wind. “Never thought this would happen,’’ Charlie remembered. “One guy quit after 16 miles because it was too HOT. That was astounding.’’
Ah but alas, all good things come to an end. Charlie and I decided after the 2020 race that we would no longer be organizing this fun event. We would gladly hand it off to other interested would-be race organizers, and there were a few who expressed a desire to keep it going.
But then, you-know-what happened starting in March 2020, you-know-what didn’t happen in January 2021 (no Recover From the Holidays race) and here we are in January 2022, with no one grabbing the baton and running with this race. And so, our humble little race, a small idea that blossomed into a neat little niche event, didn’t happen on that cold Sunday or that icy Sunday, here in 2022.
Previous cold, icy, snowy, sunny, windy — and even warm! — weekend mornings in January the past several decades? We held that race, and runners were well pleased. There is talk from some corners of the local running community that they may restart the race in 2023. I hope so. If I’m around, I’ll show up and help count laps, maybe bring a few logs for the fire.
Mid-Hudson Road Runners Club member Pete Colaizzo, the track coach at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, writes on running every week. He can be reached at runhed246@hotmail.com. For more club information, go to www.mhrrc.org
This article originally appeared on Poughkeepsie Journal: Recover From the Holidays Dutchess race absent from the calendar
