After a five-month hia­tus, Col­orado road run­ners are start­ing to have a few options for in-per­son rac­ing with a pair of events sched­uled over the next three weeks and anoth­er com­ing in October.

Pre­vi­ous­ly sched­uled for May 9, the Green­land Trail races will be held Aug. 29–30 in Lark­spur, gov­erned by strict reg­u­la­tions devel­oped with the Tri-Coun­ty Health Depart­ment. Spread out over two days instead of one for a max­i­mum of 250 run­ners each day in com­pli­ance with health depart­ment orders, those races will include an 8‑mile, 4‑mile, 50K (31-mile) and 25K (15.5‑mile). Run­ners will start one at a time in 8‑second incre­ments for social distancing.

Soon to fol­low will be the Labor Day Half Marathon in Park­er, which also will offer a 10K and a 5K. The Green­land and Park­er races are pro­duced by Col­orado Run­ner Events, which staged the Cook­ie Chase 5K this past Sun­day in City Park. That race attract­ed 300 runners.

On Thurs­day, orga­niz­ers of the Col­fax Marathon announced a new race to be held Oct. 10 in City Park. Called the Wel­come Back Den­ver 5K, it will be lim­it­ed to 700 run­ners with four hourly start groups of 175. There will be mul­ti­ple start­ing line chutes with groups of 25 peo­ple launch­ing in 2‑minute increments.

On Sun­day, the Pikes Peak Marathon (up and down the moun­tain from Man­i­tou Springs) will be held, but the Pikes Peak Ascent (one way) orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for Sat­ur­day was canceled.

“The Marathon, being a small­er field and spread out over 13 miles, is more man­age­able,” said Ron Ilgen, pres­i­dent of the Pikes Peak Marathon. “We’ve gone through exhaus­tive work in redefin­ing the event in order to meet gov­ern­ment health guide­lines at all lev­els. We are able to keep the run­ners at the required six feet dis­tance at both the start and fin­ish areas, as well as requir­ing that they wear face­masks while in Man­i­tou Springs. We also ask that they pull up their face­masks when they pass on the course.”

No one is under the illu­sion that road rac­ing as we knew it before the pan­dem­ic is com­ing back any­time soon. In addi­tion to the health rules relat­ed to the pan­dem­ic, demand so far has been low.

“I think there’s a lot of peo­ple that are not ready to come back,” said Jes­si­ca Grif­fiths, race direc­tor for Col­orado Run­ner Events. “There’s peo­ple say­ing they’re ready, but they’re not actu­al­ly sign­ing up. The short­er dis­tances could pos­si­bly sell out. The 50K maybe has 50 peo­ple in it right now. Peo­ple have not been train­ing for that dis­tance because they didn’t expect it to hap­pen. The 25K (has) about 100 peo­ple right now.

“Demand is very down. But for the peo­ple that are want­i­ng to come out, they’re very enthu­si­as­tic, and they seem very, very grate­ful that we’re even try­ing to put on an event. It’s been a chal­lenge. The guid­ance changes a lot.”

The Cook­ie Chase had more than 1,400 fin­ish­ers in 2019, so the 300 that turned out this week rep­re­sent­ed a huge drop.

“Not that we want­ed or were allowed to have a large event, but it gives you an idea of where the demand is cur­rent­ly,” Grif­fiths said. “We had small waves start from 7 a.m. until 9:30, so those 300 peo­ple were very social dis­tanced through­out the 3 miles.”

Grif­fiths said guide­lines man­dat­ed by Tri-Coun­ty Health for the Green­land Trail races include:

• Reg­is­tra­tion tables and portable restrooms must be cleaned and record­ed on an hourly timesheet.
• Only pre-pack­aged food and sealed bot­tles of liq­uids are allowed at the fin­ish line.
• Hand san­i­tiz­er is required on all tables.
• Staff and vol­un­teers must wear masks at all times.
• Staff and vol­un­teers are required to have tem­per­a­ture checks and COVID-19 screenings.

Sim­i­lar rules will be in place for the Labor Day races, includ­ing the stag­gered start, Grif­fiths said, although the inter­val times for the start launch­es may be tweaked depend­ing on how the Green­land races go.

“We paced it out,” Grif­fiths said. “If you have an elite run­ner who’s run­ning about 6‑minute miles, and one per­son starts every 8 sec­onds, they’re going to cov­er 120 feet before the next par­tic­i­pant starts. Even the walk­ers, in 8 sec­onds, will cov­er 30–35 feet before the next per­son starts. It will be very strung-out. We wouldn’t have peo­ple run­ning in big groups. I think for the peo­ple that are com­ing, they are just excit­ed to have some­thing to train for and some­thing to do that’s in per­son, even if it’s not going to be the same.”

Col­fax Marathon offi­cials Andrea Dowdy and Creigh Kel­ley spent much of the sum­mer work­ing through ideas on how a return to rac­ing would look, not just for their races but for the indus­try at large. They came up with a set of guide­lines in con­cert with state and city pub­lic health offi­cials that have been reviewed by the Den­ver Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health and Envi­ron­ment and the Col­orado Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health and Envi­ron­ment. The result­ing doc­u­ment has been offered to oth­er races — in Col­orado and around the coun­try — as a template.

Den­ver offi­cials allowed the Cook­ie Chase to hap­pen last week­end under those guide­lines. Now the hope is that oth­er races will be able to fol­low the tem­plate, although Kel­ley says it’s imprac­ti­cal to stage races longer than 5Ks until COVID-19 restric­tions are eased or lifted.

“We knew we need­ed to cre­ate rec­om­mend­ed guide­lines so that race direc­tors or event orga­niz­ers, includ­ing char­i­ties — all these char­i­ties that are los­ing a lot of mon­ey — would have a doc­u­ment they could read and under­stand that would allow them to begin to think about putting on an event so they don’t have to wait anoth­er year,” Kel­ley said, adding that 10–15 race direc­tors around the coun­try will be using the tem­plate to bring their races back. “Our whole mis­sion was to give our indus­try a way they can get their arms around the pos­si­bil­i­ty of putting on an event again, safely.”

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