28 And Going Strong. Two of Delmar Dash's former RDs talk about what it takes to make a race.

Running is a sport of continuity and repetition. We train on the same roads day after day, week after week and put the same races on our calendar year after year. From the outside (in other words, for those who are not runners), this sounds incredibly dull. But many of the runners that I know appreciate this aspect of our sport. In a world that demands that we pay attention to the new, running grounds us in the tried and true. When things have gone well, and runners toe the starting line of a race, it will all feel normal and familiar. When things have gone well, a race will unfold as it has before, as thousands of other races have before it.

Since 1989, the Delmar Dash has stood out as a strong beat in the capital region’s annual running rhythm. On Sunday, April 3rd, despite some early morning snow squalls and blustery winds, the race once again drew a large field of runners and unfolded as one might expect. For local area runners, the Delmar Dash is like water to a fish: we expect it to be there, year after year, and so do not really give it much thought. But it had to start somewhere, and something has to keep it going.

In the late 1980s, Hank Steadman saw a hole in the capital region road racing calendar. A member of the Hudson-Mohawk Road Runners for over a decade, Hank wanted to see the sport expand beyond the group former high school and college runners that made up the elite field to embrace the new, casual runners that came out of the 1980s fitness boom. The club had (and still has) a very popular winter running series, that culminated in a marathon in February, and then, starting in May, the race calendar filled up, but there wasn’t much on the racing calendar in the early spring.

Hank wanted to offer a race that would not only fill in this gap in the calendar, but offer something that was different than the many 5k road races that were popping up like mushrooms across the capital region. He chose the five mile distance because it was different and because it was achievable, but more challenging, for the casual runner and, for the racers, served as the perfect shake-out race after a long winter of long, steady miles. The race debuted on April 23, 1989 with over 330 finishers, and a few years later was moved up to the beginning of the month, making it a go-to race for those looking for a ‘tune-up’ before the Boston Marathon. Since then, through all 28 of its runnings, the Delmar Dash has drawn a large field ranging from front-of-the-pack racers to casual runners, to the neighborhood side streets of Delmar.

That predictability that we, as runners, depend on does not happen automatically. It is an achievement of the community of runners in ways that are sometimes visible, but often not. Hank told me that the hardest job of the race director, the thing that takes the most time, is maintaining those strong, personal connections that you need to keep people invested in the event. It’s a lot of one-on-one conversations to build the personal connections that you need to get those donations of food, finds sponsors to help defray costs, convince volunteers to give up their Sunday morning to direct runners along the course, and work with police departments to help with traffic. There is no secret formula that makes all this just happen. You need the support of a wider community and, to do that year after year, you need--to borrow a phrase from presidential politics--a good “ground game.”

That’s something that Joe Richardson understood very clearly when he took over as race director in 2004. He knew that the Delmar Dash had done so well because it was supported by the local community, but he also knew he needed to cultivate that support. When he took over he added a kids race to the event to get more families out, worked hard to publicize it local media, and went door-to-door through the Delmar neighborhoods putting race brochures at people’s homes and leaving them with local churches.

Because of this strong network of support, the race has survived its moments of crisis and thrived as the running and racing scene has changed around it. In 2000, Hank and Joe were greeted by nearly two feet of snow on race morning and, with the city having already taken the plows off of the trucks, knew that there was no way they could hold the race that morning. They hurriedly tried to get the word out through local radio stations and even had to turn away a family that had driven down in the storm from Washington County, but three weeks later the race went on and nearly 400 people finished. In 2005, the owner of the Boston Market where the race started was looking to tear down the building and, three weeks before the race date, decided that he didn’t want to host the event. Joe Richardson managed to convince him to give them one more year, but, after that, worked it out with the Bethlehem Middle School to stage the race there, and worked with USATF officials to get a new course certified for 2006.

In the last decade or so, long-running community races have had to compete with the growing popularity of charity races, something that both Hank and Joe pointed to when I asked them about how the running scene has changed over the years. Sponsors are a bit harder to come by because a lot of them would rather attach their name, or their business’s name to a popular cause. Grocery stores and other food vendors are less forthcoming with donations because they are constantly being asked to supply bananas and bagels to running events. Many police departments now charge a fee, raising the total cost of putting on a race.

At the same time, as Joe reminded me, with the increased media attention on wellness and fitness, there are more and more people who are running for exercise. Indeed, what is somewhat remarkable about a race like the Delmar Dash is that it’s managed to accommodate these changes without having to change all that much. Make a good course and hold it at the right time of the year, and you’ll draw out the fast racers; reach out to the wider running community, keep the registration fee low, and make it hospitable to people of all abilities, and you’ll get the back-of-the-packers and the walkers.

When Joe Richardson stepped down as race director a few years ago, he knew that the Delmar Dash was in good hands. A new generation had come up through the Hudson-Mohawk Running Club, and so, for the first time in many years on that Sunday morning in April, he was able to run his own race, with bib #1. No longer stuck at the staging area, checking on every last detail until the last runner came through and the awards were handed out, he could head out on the course and see the fruits of his labor of building this community race. The friends to cheer him on, the dozens of volunteer course marshals to guide him through (though he didn’t need it). Some things had changed--he had swapped out his trusty New Balances for pair of Hoka’s--but really, it was just another race.