Friday, May 5, 2000
Friday, May 5, 2000 |
| Runners
convention jogs into PTC next week By
MICHAEL BOYLAN All the talk lately is about how much of a soccer area Fayette County is. That is certainly true, but we are also a running area too. That will be proven next week when the Road Runners Club of America national convention is conducted in Peachtree City, May 10-13. It is the 43rd annual convention for the RRCA. The event will be hosted by the Peachtree City Running Club and the Atlanta Track Club, as well as the RRCA. There will be workshops, luncheons, seminars, runs, an auction, an awards banquet and a trade show. Nearly every topic in the running world will be covered, including forming a running club, training, and newsletter and web site development. The Wyndham Peachtree Conference Center will be home base during the convention. It will be the site of the RRCA Expo May 11 and 12, as well as the site of the annual awards banquet Saturday, May 13. The keynote speaker for this year's banquet is Katherine Switzer. Switzer is best known as the woman who first wore numbers in the 1967 Boston marathon and inadvertently broke the gender barrier in the formerly all-male race and all-male sport of running. She was the visionary who created the Avon Running Circuit 20 years ago. Together with Avon, Switzer was a driving force to get the women's marathon recognized as an official event in the 1984 Olympic Games. Today, Switzer is program director of Avon Running, a position she spearheads full-time, following an 11-year sports broadcasting, sports promotion and motivational speaking career. She is the author of three books and has written articles for several newspapers and magazines. Switzer has run 35 marathons, won the 1974 New York Marathon, and in 1975 was ranked sixth in the world and third in the United States. She will receive the Fred Lebow Women's Running Award at the Saturday evening banquet. Saturday will begin with an 8K race on the cart paths of Peachtree City, showcasing the course that continues to draw runners from all over the country. For information on the convention, phone 703-836-0558 or visit RRCA on the web at www.rrca.org. |
