'Fifth Season 8k' back on people's course

CEDAR RAPIDS - Brad Scott knows running is easier when people are cheering. That's why he's excited about this year's CVRA Fifth Season Race.

For most of the event's first 25 years, the 8-kilometer race started and finished downtown. But construction on Second and Third avenues forced a change in the route for the last two Fourth of July races. The change took runners off residential streets, where families cheered from their yards.

“You didn't have a lot of crowd support,” he said. “It makes it a lot more fun when people are cheering. It helps you keep going.”

Scott and his wife, Claudia, who have run the race for more than 20 years, will hear cheers again this year. The race has moved to something close to its traditional route. Runners will start by Greene Square Park on Third Avenue SE, turn around inside Bever Park and return the same way for a downhill finish at Green Square.

“Now you're back in town, running past houses,” Scott said. “It gets the town involved.”

“We looked at what Third Avenue had become, and decided it was doable,” race director Colin Flynn said. “The city has done a wonderful job with Third Avenue. It's in better stead than it was.”

Flynn said there was some negative reaction to the course change the last two years.

“The old course was, I guess you could call it revered,” he said. “We're hearing positive comments from people on the streets, and in emails, that are glad we're headed back there.”

A return to the downtown course isn't the only change. Alliant Energy dropped its sponsorship of the race for the first time in 27 years, which means a tighter budget and less prize money. Five hundred dollars will go to the top male and female finishers, $350 for second place and $250 for third, considerably less than the prize pot from previous races.

Flynn said in past years with a larger budget, the race paid for elite runners' expenses, including plane tickets and hotel rooms. With no money to do that, he said, race organizers don't know if elite runners will show up.

But Flynn said the average local runner won't miss the elite runners much.

“We polled people last year after the race about what they liked about the experience,” he said. “And we were surprised that most people put the elite athletes at close to the bottom of what they felt was important about the race.”

Scott agreed.

“It's always fun on an out-and-back course to see the elites battling it out,” he said. “But for most runners, that's not what draws you to these races.”

What draws Iowa runners to the Fifth Season Race, Scott said, is simpler than that.

“It's the big local race,” he said. “It's a way of supporting the community by staying in town.”