Juggernaut

Last weekend was a really big race here in Seattle and as I worked the expo for a company handing out samples of juice and seeing the runners stream by me for hours and hours at a time I kept on thinking, my god, what a juggernaut this race series has become.

I have always been bothered by this race series and as I stood there, peddling juice to the captive audience, I realized why. Drum roll please......because they are so commercial and marketed and shiny and soul-less! To me they are the Walmart of the running world. Well, the more expensive Walmart.

This series is such a juggernaut that they can get away with charging outrageous prices, and people pay them these outrageous sums of money. If these races come to your city, just like Walmart, there is no competing with them. Smaller races anywhere near this race on the calendar get eaten alive, reduced to whimpering piles of nothing, forcing them to move dates that they have held for years.

This race series does a little bit of good for the community but when you dig around its not a whole heck of a lot. Its mostly a commercial, for-profit entity. What bothers me the most about this race is that it has the potential to do such a tremendous amount of good and it misses the mark. Does running always have to be about raising money? No, but when you have the power to raise that much money and you don't, well, to me that is wrong.

But I guess the 30,000 or so people that run each and every one of them across the country isn't bothered too much. I guess the people that shop at Walmart don't seem to mind supporting their business practices either.

So, how do I create a juggernaut of a race like this, and have it be a truly charitable event, raising so much money for cancer that cancer is obliterated off the face of the planet? I don't know, but I sure as heck am going to study this race series to learn all their tricks!