LITTLE ROCK — Some runners attend races the way backsliders attend church - once or twice a year.
Look for those runners Saturday when the annual Dam Night Run 5K sets up camp amid a sprawl of tailgate parties in the spillway parking area at DeGray Lake near Arkadelphia. Although it’s no Christmas or Easter, this race is more than a 3.1 mile run or walk - it’s an observance, with festive annual traditions.
Race director Mike Prince brings the music, the ice-cold watermelon, the big water-spraying boat out in the lake that sets up a mist shower to cool off finishers. Racers use chip timing; and there’s an official walkers division as well as one for wheelchairs.
Long after the running’s over and done, members of the state’s running clubs will be hanging out, dancing around, visiting - on into the night.
The clubs set up tailgate parties and compete for a traveling trophy, the Tailgate Award - an actual, appallingly overdecorated tailgate from a truck. The winning team gets to find some place to store that tailgate until next year’s 5K.
“We insist that they take it with them,” Prince says.
But it’s not accurate to say that overdecoration’s the overarching goal of these club camps: They setup their most exquisite lawn chairs and their most treasured plastic flamingos and aim to make up what they lack in accouterments with music, grilling skills and humor.
But rumor has it that the Little Rock Roadrunners Club is looking for a dolphin, and if they can’t find a good inflatable one they’ll settle for live.
The race has a mostly downhill, point-to-point 3.1 mile course on Skyline Drive. Flatbed trucks will carry the more than 600 runners up Iron Mountain to the start. At 8 p.m., racers will run down to the parking area, with the last tenth of a mile in the flatness of the lot. Along the way, annoying flat places and at least one uphill interrupt the downhill flow.
Online registration is at register.macsrts.com. Race-day registration, which closes at 7 p.m. at the spillway, costs $30 ($15 for ages 18 and younger). More information is at (870) 403-2086.
The race is also part of the Arkansas Grand Prix series. Very fast runners will turn out to compete in the heat.
So far this year, a record 406 people have joined the Grand Prix, six more women than men.
More information is at arkrrca.com.
Fire!
When disaster strikes, volunteer firefighters come running. In Centerton on Saturday, runners cansay thank you by participating in the Centerton Fire Run 5K and 1 Mile, a fundraiser for the Northwest Arkansas city’s volunteer fire department.
Proceeds will be used to buy new firefighting apparatus.
The mile run begins at 7:30 a.m. followed 15 minutes later by the 5K. The three fastest men and women will win awards, as will the first three finishers in age divisions.
It’s not a huge field, but that doesn’t mean it will be a cinch to win a trophy. Last year’s winner was Christian Moore of Fayetteville, who beat 44 other men and all the women in 17:15:3; and Jackie Doyle of Centerton was fastest of 28 women, finishing in 20:56:8.
Registration costs $20. A form is online at centertonar.us, or you can sign up in person Friday or before the race Saturday at City Hall, 290 Main St. Cherie Vaughan, the permits and inspections clerk who is collecting registration forms for race director Jeff Coffelt, suggests you arrive between 6 and 6:30 a.m. to register on race day.
After they register, runners will use a paved path along a pond to walk from City Hall to the area near Sonic where the course begins. Vaughan has done this race. From behind the Sonic, she says, it runs up into a subdivision and back down.
So it’s hilly?
Yes, she says, but it’s a greatrun “because you’ll have a stretch where it’s level, then you’ll go up a hill, then you’ll go down a hill, and it will go a little level and then it will go up and down, up, down and ... bleegh.
“I mean it will wear you out.”
The race is also the opening event of Centerton Day, including music, games (dry and wet) for children, a parade, lunch, helicopter demonstrations, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s tank of homely fish and a chance to win a new .22-caliber rifle.
If you think those fish are pretty, I don’t want to hear about it.
More information about the festival is at (479) 795-2750.
Derks or Derricks
The 38th annual Pine Tree Festival in Dierks once again will include a 5K race.
“It’s been three years or so since we had it,” says race director Jeffrey Mounts. “It used to be real big, 50 or 60 runners, but it kind of dwindled.”
Maybe attendance dropped off because people didn’t know how to say the town’s name and were embarrassed to go there, fearing their ignorance would be found out.
If so, shed those fears. Mounts says residents are totally tolerant. While the so-called correct pronunciation is “Derks,” no one minds if you say “Derricks.”
The Howard County community in southwest Arkansas was originally a sawmill town called Hardscrabble; it was renamed to honor Hans Dierks, who founded the Dierks Lumber and Coal Co. His descendants say their name “Derks.”
“But it’s really pronounced both ways, Derricks or Derks,” Mounts says. “It’s kind of like when you’re younger you call it Derricks for some reason, and when you get older you call it Derks.”
The revived 5K will begin at 7:30 a.m. Saturday in Dierks City Park, and the route is not a hard one, he says: “There’s not many hills.”
Race-day registration costs $20, and the first 25 registered walkers and runners are guaranteed a T-shirt.
The Pine Tree Festival actually begins Friday, when the plan includes a kiddie parade and a volleyball tournament. After Saturday’s 5K, the agenda offers a lot of active recreation, from a Fireman’s Challenge to arm wrestling and log loading.
The fireman’s contest is for four-member teams of firefighters in their heavy suits, as many teams as any department cares to bring; they’ll compete in bucket brigade, wild hose recovery, obstacle course and water polo.
More information is at (870) 557-3790 and dierkschamberofcommerce.com.
ActiveStyle, Pages 26 on 07/26/2010