Nearly 1,200 preregister for Spa Running Festival
Almost 1,200 participants have preregistered for Saturday’s re-branded Spa Running Festival, race Director Cindy Baswell said Thursday.
The 43rd event, formerly known as the Spa 10K/5K, has added a new half marathon this year, the Summit 2 Challenge Half Marathon, which will take runners to the summit of West Mountain twice.
Baswell, who is a member of the Spa Pacers, said Thursday that the races will be held rain or shine, unless there is an electrical storm. The National Weather Service forecast calls for partly sunny conditions with a high of 50 degrees and only a 20 percent chance of rain before 1 p.m.
Baswell said online registration ended Tuesday and 1,189 runners and walkers had signed up, with walkers accounting for only about 100 of that number. The inaugural half marathon was capped at 250 entrants and is sold out.
“We capped it at 250 when we initially started planning this, so it’s a sellout. We could have more if we wanted to, but we capped it at 250, so we’re going to stop there. We’re excited that it sold out for the first year of the half marathon and the challenge it presents,” she said.
Baswell said the half-marathon runners will follow the same course as the 10K participants, but when they get to the West Mountain summit road, they will go to the summit, then back down to Prospect Avenue, complete a loop around Pecan, Flint, Quapaw and Fern, and then go back up to the summit again, which gives the race its name.
“Then they come back down the mountain to Prospect Avenue and follow the 10K course back to the convention center, where the races begin and end,” she said.
Baswell said Hot Springs National Park personnel will close West Mountain from 7-10:30 a.m.
“The half marathon begins at 7 a.m. and it will take them longer to do the course, so they are starting an hour earlier so that the majority of them will finish about the time the 10K runners finish. The 10K and 5K will begin at 8 a.m., but we are allowing a three and a half-hour time frame for the course to be closed for the half marathon participants,” she said.
Runners who still want to participate in the races can register from 3-7 p.m. today at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa, or at 6 a.m. Saturday at the Bank of the Ozarks Arena lobby on Convention Boulevard, Baswell said.
She also asked the public to come out and cheer for the runners.
“We encourage that and want it. We will have a lot of activity down Convention Boulevard because that’s where the races start and finish, but we encourage people in the Quapaw-Prospect Historic District to come out and watch. We want as many cheerleaders as possible out there,” she said.
This also is the third year the Spa Pacers have partnered with the Project Hope Food Bank to collect food.
“This is our third year to partner with them and we’re excited to be able to do that. We try to fill up the van they bring out, and if all the registered runners brought one or two cans of food, look at what we’d have,” she said.
According to a “wish list” furnished by Project Hope, needed food items include canned meat, peanut butter, nutritional drinks for seniors, shelf stable milk, dry beans and rice, canned fruits and vegetables, boxed mashed pota- toes, individual dinners for back packs, stuffing mixes, cereals, and macaroni and cheese.