Earthlings Running To Nowhere But Pridesville

Posted Mar 2, 2009 by Tom McEwen

Updated Mar 2, 2009 at 08:17 PM

Aliens cruising way up there looking down their trioculars—surely binoculars are not enough—this weekend past at Tampa’s crowded Bayshore Boulevard must have wondered what was chasing everybody, then why the runners turned around and went back where they came from and got a medal thrown around their neck for making it. Guess they don’t have Mars runs like we have Gasparilla Runs and pay for the opportunity to do it. The races have given about $1.8 million to charity through the years. And for your fee you get a T-shirt, a medal, some pride, and a good night’s sleep afterwards.

It is a good deal, a fun deal, usually a healthy deal, a meet-and-greet deal, an at-your-own-pace deal, in any age group. If you can move, you can participate in this Publix Super Markets Gasparilla Distance Classic, even if it is to shift from one foot to the other as an applauding spectator.

Participating are moms pushing carriages with babies, toddlers, teen-afters, he-men and she-women, the younger, older, the aging and aged, those in wheelchairs, those who could use the chairs, always, always someone with a special story, with two days or racing of 5 and 15 kilometers Saturday, then a full and half-marathon on Sunday, There are always special stories, said Distance boss Susan C. Harmeling and Wayne Pappy, volunteer and city rec chief all 37 years of the race.

  “This man was in Tampa General for a heart transplant. He had a temporary heart,’’ is how I heard it, “working off a bedside battery. He badly wanted to run the Gasparilla. His hospital team built a portable battery carrier for the hooked up heart, readied it for mobility, and walked, alongside the runner during the event.”  He got his medal. May deserve a Purple Heart as well.

  And, it all started with a young man named Max Mitchell who worked for the city. He came to see me at The Tribune in 1977. Runs were just beginning. We called Recreation Director Dave Barksdale, always a go-for-it guy.  The three of us met at the Tribune Conference room with the late Publisher Red Pittman, who, no spendthrift, but a visionary who trusted his associates, who Okayed, met with Mayor Billy Poe, who was all for it, checked with potential sponsors like Publix, Pepin-Budweiser, Coke, The Columbia, the usual Tampa boosters and Mason Dixon of Q-105. They landed the big and anxious. All are still involved. It was/is a can’t lose deal. Great and lesser deeds are done, great and lesser goals achieved, like that of Nan Jones whose young son saw Mayor Poe running despite a health problem, and told his mom he’d run the next year and if he could not, would she run for him? She did after the youngster died. She ran behind Mayor Poe until the stretch and then passed him, looked to Heaven and waved to a passing cloud.

On this weekend just over, Harmeling said about 4,500 ran in the 15- K, about 9,500 in the 5-K, perhaps 1,600 in the marathon, 4,200 in the half marathon.

“When we had our meetings, the City and The Tribune jumped in, as did Q-105 and Pepin and Coke and, of course, Publix, now our title sponsor. Publix had the times and categories done by the timing company to include all who were able to register, the under ten and over 80,’’ explained Harmeling.

Publix declared in its Tribune advertisement it will be back for 2010. Hope here is that all cited will return again, including the eight who have made all of the runs: Stuart Carter, Ken Clark, Lewis Harris, Rob Mason, George McConnell, Luis Meija, Mike Shaver and Tom Singletary.

  Oh, yes, Mayor Pam Iorio was around and involved and is all for it, as were those who led the city before she, and wishes it well. She surely will be happy when participants can take her under-construction River Walk.

It is pretty easy to favor such a deal as Publix Distance Classic. 

  Those on Mars must still be trying to figure where everybody’s going in such a hurry.