LITTLE ROCK — The pattern repeats annually during the third week of October: A happy horde of runners clad in pink garb ranging from running shorts to feather boas fills downtown Little Rock.
With upwards of 46,000 women participating in the Susan G. Komen Arkansas Race for the Cure, a question emerges: How much bigger can the event get?
The query also vexes Sherrye McBride, the event’s executive director.
“I don’t know how much bigger it could get either,” McBride said Thursday.
What is known is that when the competitive 5K race starts at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, more than 550 women will bolt from the start line, and 30 minutes later the remaining 45,450 or so runners, trotters and walkers will follow.
But the logistics behind balancing the aim of providing a competitive event, where times range between 16 minutes and 30 minutes, and a celebration of stamping out breast cancer took a large step a year ago.
Race director Bill Torrey rolled out the 30-minute window last year as a way to make life easier for workers at the finish line to sort handing out medallions to the race’s top 300 finishers.
“Our competitive runners loved it,” McBride said. “They no longer had to fight for a place at the front and can just go run.”
Aside from handing out the spoils, the change made it easier to remove timing mats used in accurate chip-timing systems from the finish area, where there isn’t a traditional chute to funnel competitors who paid an extra $10 for accurate times and a reward.
By breaking up the start times, those tasks aren’t conducted with a sea of bodies pouring in.
“It’s also taken a lot of pressure off us,” McBride said. “When we were doing one race for everyone, we felt so much pressure to start it exactly at 8 o’clock.”
And if there are logistical problems, there’s no inherent pressure back at the start line, where the remaining runners and walkers don’t nitpick if the race doesn’t go off exactly at 8 a.m.
“If we go a minute off, at a minute ’til or three minutes after, nobody cares,” McBride said. “It’s been really nice.”
Attempting to find the balance between making the day a competitive event and a day to raise awareness has been the goal from the start, Mc-Bride said.
If the solution requires an earlier start for runners, officials and volunteers, then so be it..
“It may be part of the reason we do have such a large race,” McBride said. “We’ve made an effort to accommodate everyone,” Mc Bride said. “... Most of the people who come down there are down for the celebration.”
And if it increases the popularity of the event, then McBride might have to look for a new venue.
“I’m sure there’s some point at which it’s bigger than our downtown,” she said. “We haven’t found it yet.”
Sports, Pages 21 on 10/19/2012