Running the Rails a Community Success

By Beth Gulley

Saturday morning I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and it was Danny. “Hi Beth,” he said. “Are you running today?” I told him I planned to, and I showed him my race bib. He explained that he was only going to walk a mile because of his bad knee. Later that morning Danny tapped my shoulder again when we lined up at the race start. When the race officials hollered “go,” fast runners at the front of the race took off almost as quickly as the train that had just passed, but the walkers at the back of the race are what make Running the Rails for a Reason so refreshing. The most noticeable group are the people who receive services from Tri-Ko, people like Danny. It is common to run races for charity, but it is unusual to run the race alongside people who are served by the charity. The money raised by Running the Rails for a Reason goes to Tri-Ko, and anyone who ran the race would have seen exactly who Tri-Ko serves as they walked the one mile and 5K races. In fact during two parts of the race, the faster runners and the walkers pass each other. At the first of those points, Danny waved at me and told me what I good job I was doing. At the second point, the runners around me (most of who I recognized from places I frequent in Miami County) and the walkers we encountered yelled encouraging words to each other. Susan Barrett has done an amazing job of creating a race for the whole community, and the community in turn has done a great job of acting like one.

Short URL: http://osawatominews.com/?p=1138

Posted by admin on May 3 2011. Filed under Beth Gulley, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry