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A pack of runners competes at the 2006 Falmouth Road Race.
Scheduling the relatively new Beach to Beacon 10k within a week of the venerable Falmouth Road Race was a stroke of genius. Over the last decade, the two races have become a sort of summer doubleheader on the road circuit. Though the race distances (10k and 7 miles, respectively) and the courses (rolling seaside roads in vacation communities, sprinkled with stunning ocean vistas) have a lot in common, the characters of the two races are as different as those of their respective states.
The older of the two, Falmouth, has decades of tradition, with names like Bill Rodgers and Frank Shorter sprinkled through the race history. It has the Saturday evening mile races at the high school, and often deeper fields both for open and American runners. It's in the coverage area of a two-newspaper city, so there's decent coverage in both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald. The city also contributes to a big spectator crowd, which lines large sections of the course.
Beach to Beacon, which seems like a new race even after its ninth running, has only one name from the Rodgers/Shorter era, but it's a big one. Joan Benoit Samuelson, the race founder, is so well known in her home state that nearly everyone uses only her first name. From its start, it was the biggest race in Maine, unlike Falmouth which lives in the shadow of a major marathon. The international field is respectable, but not always as deep as Falmouth's. Beach to Beacon makes up for this by virtue of its small-state location.
Very early on, Beach to Beacon promoted a "race within the race" by offering prize money for the top Maine runners. The local race community embraced it, and it's taken for granted now that all the best Maine runners will show up to race. Falmouth does recognize the top local finishers, but it's for Falmouth residents, not Massachusetts residents. The former category is too small, and the latter too large, but "Maine runners" turns out to be just right.
The local paper for Beach to Beacon, the Portland Press Herald, gives as much ink to the race as they do to the Super Bowl. It's front-page news for several days before and after the race, with previews, overviews, and deep coverage of the race itself. They publish the names and bib numbers of the top contenders, including the locals, so the spectators know who they're looking for. Furthermore, it's straight sports coverage: they've made an effort to become knowledgeable about the sport and do good track writing, not just second-string improvisation.
It's the kind of coverage the Globe gives the Boston Marathon, and it's helped make Beach to Beacon a major event in the area. It's why everyone in Southern Maine now knows Donny Drake, the UMaine student who finished 15th overall with a four-digit bib number. The publicity the local athletes get from that one race raises the profile of other races they run for the rest of the year.
In this way, Falmouth and Beach to Beacon illustrate one of the conundrums of road racing in this country. Our headline events may happen in major media markets, where they have the potential to reach millions of spectators and fans--but they compete with other large professional sports for media and spectator attention. Meanwhile, other events which take place at a greater remove from the big population centers can be the center of attention for entire weeks, and can have a positive effect on the sport in their area that's bigger than just race week.
Posted by Parker Morse at 9:47 p.m. | Tags: Editorials