A Race is Really Not About the Awards (Part 3)

In case you're just popping in and you missed it...I'm writing all about the various lessons I learned while directing a small local 5K called the Give it Back Track.

I was asked with only a few months to go until race day to direct a local 5K. The race is put on by the Huntsville Inner City Learning Center so that the kids who attend the center can have the change to "give back" to the community that gives so much to them. The course starts about 1/2 mile from the Learning Center and finishes pretty much at it's front door.

Now I'm not sure what you think of when you hear the words "inner city" but I think of places like downtown Detroit or Chicago. The words that come to mind for me are poverty, crime, danger, and drugs. I don't really think of the Huntsville Alabama I am used to seeing, even though I drive past the housing projects on this course several times a month. I drive past them, I don't drive through them.

When I found out the course of this race runs in the heart of one of what I hope is the "worst" neighborhoods we have in our city, if I'm being completely honest, I panicked. MY name would be on the race permit. My name would the one where it says "person responsible for putting this event on". If someone got hurt I would be the one a finger would be pointing too. I don't go into those neighborhoods for a reason.

And yet...some of the kids who attend the Learning Center LIVE in those neighborhoods. LIVE THERE EVERY DAY. Sleep there. Wake up there. Spend weekends there. The ones who don't live in the race course neighborhoods live in areas like them.

LIVE THERE. They don't just drive past and they don't just run through.


When I started my own non-profit, one of my biggest goals was to bring low income kids into the sport of triathlon in order to teach them life skills needed to persevere in life. Mental and physical strength. Endurance. Integrity. Moxie. My goal would be to get kids in neighborhoods like these and give them some of the skills they need to be able to get out. And yet I found myself scared to event think about running through.

I was struck by that. If I wasn't willing to even go into the neighborhood how on earth could I think I would be able to impact the kids who live there. How can anyone truly help someone they refuse to actually SEE? Sure you can give money to a cause but until you are touched by it you can't fully connect with it. It's one thing to provide a meal for a kid, it's another to hear their stomach growl, and even yet another to go hungry yourself. It's one thing to donate a pair of shoes but quite another to see kids running in shoes that are too small (or too big because they haven't yet grown into them).

But I was struggling for so many reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that I did not (and still don't) think the race was the best way to accomplish it's MAIN goal. I was told the MAIN reason this race is put on is so that the kids can have the chance to know what it's like to give back.

But that's like saying kids raise the money in school fundraisers. Okay, maybe some of them do -- the ones who have a car wash or bake sale. But most kids' parents sell the crap the school has told them to peddle (cookie dough, sheets - yes, sheets! - wrapping paper, candy bards...the list goes on). The kids don't sell that stuff, the parents do. Then the kids get some little prize for how much the parents sell. For this race, historically, the organizer gets donations so that after all the bills are paid a check can be written to a non-profit. The kids aren't involved in the planning or the production of the race. They train to run it and then run it...that's about it. Well, they probably pose for a picture with the big check.

That was a big disconnect in my mind. I don't like when the thing you are doing isn't pushing you toward the goal you are trying to reach. It would be like saying I'm going to sit on a couch and watch someone else run to get ready for a marathon. ...it does't work like that.

But I also knew I didn't have time to do anything differently. I sort of tried, but I just wasn't going to be able to pull it off in the amount of time I had left.

Thanks for stopping in and sticking around...we are ALMOST there...