OUC brings back purse, prominence
Step aside, tourists. Central Florida is far more than a destination region for theme park entertainment near I-Drive. If Track Shack, Central Florida’s leading running organization, has anything to say about it, Central Florida will be destination region for competitive runners.
The OUCOrlando Half Marathon and 5k returns this Saturday bigger, better and with a renewed vision to make this road race among the tops in the nation. To help accomplish that goal, event organizers added a $2,500 purse for the top three male and female participants for the first time in two decades, race director John Hughes said.
“The runners here will be some of the best in the Southeast region, and we will keep adding to that,” Hughes said. “Wewant to attract some of the top runners in the country and eventually in the world.”
Online registration is now closed, but runners interested in participating can still register for the half marathon and 5k at Track Shack, 1104 N. Mills Ave., Orlando, until 7 p.m. today. Registration is $80.
There was a time when Orlando was home to some of the best elite road races in the country, Hughes said.
The Red Lobster10k, last run in downtown Orlando in 1990, attracted elite runners from as far as Norway, England and Mexico. The OUC Orlando Half Marathon saw its heyday of competitive runners fall off around the mid-’90s as charity road races exploded. Races started dropping purses, resulting in higher participation from casual runners, which meant more money was raised toward charitable causes.
This was good news for distance running as a whole, but it also lowered opportunities for competitive runners.
It wasn’t uncommonto find Olympic hopefuls using the OUCOrlando Half Marathon for training. In1994, Florida alum Keith Brantley won the event in just a little over an hour (1:03.02) and went on to make the1996 U.S. men’s Olympic marathon team. In1995, Anne Marie Lauck competed in the OUCHalfMarathon as a tune-up for the U.S. Women’s Olympic trials. Lauck made the U.S. women’s marathon team in1996 and 2000.
Before that, the country’s premier10,000-meter runner, Todd Williams, used the OUCHalf Marathon as his debut fresh out of the University of Tennessee. Williams, like Brantley and Lauck, won the event.
“We all love to see who’s the fastest and who’s the best,” Hughes said. “But obviously when you put on a world-class event, it gets more attention and gets more people to participate.”
Like the UKRoyal Air Force Cross Country team. In all, the event already has an estimated 4,000 participants from 35 states and six runners from Urayasu, Japan, as part of the Orlando’s Sister Cities exchange program established in1989 to promote cultural understanding and stimulate economic development.
“Wewant to make it a premier half marathon in the U.S., and we’d really like it to be something that the city also can be really proud of too,” Hughes said. “Top athletes, great entertainment on course, great venue. … We want to showcase Orlando, and it’s a beautiful city, and it’s got so muchmore to offer than I really believe people even know.”