Road Race Stats - Marathons & Other Running Races

Monday, April 25, 2005

Austin Bun Run 5K - The 2005 Change

After covering the major world races like the Boston and London Marathon I thought I would cover something local to me: the Schlotzsky's 5K Bun Run in Austin, Texas. I had found a great place to watch the runners on Lamar's pedestrian bridge. This allowed me to see the runners at about mile 1 and 2. I then was able to sprint over to the finish line to watch the runners come in. RunTex has a good race summary.

An interesting thing about the race was the two women leaders. Both wore the same blue running suits, and they were running right near the leading men. They actually almost beat the men, finishing just 8 seconds behind. I found out from this Austin Statesman article that they were from Russia's national team and have been training in Germantown, Maryland.

An interesting thing about the Bun Run race this year is that they removed the cash prizes. The major sponsor, Schlotzsky's Deli, had filed for Chapter 11 last year was sold off to Bobby Cox Companies, Inc. this year. In previous years, the prize purse had reached $20K and it had become one of the largest 5Ks in the country with over 20 years of history.

Even without cash prizes, the Bun Run was able to attract the two Russion women who agreed to race largely due to their ties to Austin's running community. So these elite women gave the local Austin men a challenge.

So with this change in the Bun Run, I'll look into how it affected the race results. The top times were definitely slower, but outside the elite runners, how did the times change? More to come in future posts.

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