I have waited 15 years to run this race....and I loved it! It turned out to be an unusual Falmouth, as you will see, and I had a ball!!

 

Falmouth is a 7.1 mile race that has become a major attraction for a field of 10,000, including many elite runners. The rolling course presents spectacular vistas as it makes it’s way along the coast of Cape Cod from Wood’s Hole to Falmouth, Massachusetts. It is known as a race that almost defies description. However, there are words to describe the 1999 Falmouth Road Race.....rain... deluge....monsoon....waterworld are a few that come to mind.

 

It rained all night before the race. The rain varied from light to hard all morning from 7:30, when we caught one of the first shuttle buses from Falmouth to the starting area, until 15 minutes before the start of the race at 10:00. Then, the skies really opened! It poured buckets all throughout the race. Water ran freely and deeply everywhere on the course. Rivers of water flowing down the hills created illusions of running in place, like on a treadmill, when running uphill. Ankle deep pools of water formed like mini-lakes at the bottom of many hills. Volunteers frantically dug trenches on the shoulders of the roads throughout the race in a futile attempt to drain some of the water away. Joan Benoit Samuelson was quoted as saying that she ran through knee deep water at one point. The deepest I experienced was shin deep, but I’m taller that she. J The wheelchair racers had a particularly difficult time of it because the roads were so slippery. But, they all refused an offer by the race director to cancel the wheelchair competition. A friend told me that this was a course that begged to be photographed. So, I carried a camera with me....in a plastic bag.....and never took it out or took a picture. It would have been futile to try.

 

The race used a staggered start with 5 corrals. Following a 9:45 start by the wheelchair racers, the elite group started at 10:00, followed by corrals of about 2000 at 10:01, 10:04, and 10:08. The final group of about 4000 went off at 10:12. Each runner’s number was assigned and bib was color coded according to the corral s/he should start in. I was assigned to the fourth corral that started at 10:08. The scoring computer was programmed to subtract the appropriate amount of time from each finisher’s clock time to arrive at an “official” time. However, the corrals were poorly monitored. And, the trash bags that thousands of us wore to stay as dry as possible right up to shortly before the race started masked our bibs. Thus, many, many runners started in the wrong corral. As a result, the “official” results will be fraught with inaccuracies. I saw dozens just around me who should have been in an earlier or later corral. Most, who should have been in the larger 5^th corral, will receive an “official” time 4 minutes faster than they actually ran. I suppose the race officials can eventually sort it all out from comparing finishing order to apparent “official” times, but it has to be a monumental job, which will be compounded by poor monitoring of the finish chutes. I witnessed several runners jump chutes in the chaos caused by the driving rain.

 

Now I understand why the Falmouth race director contacts each “apparent” age group winner before mailing an award. Except for the front runners, it isn’t possible to be assured from the “official” results that a “winner’s” finishing time and position is accurate, especially in the older and slower age groups, even if the person plays by the rules properly.