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The South Florida Grand Prix Series will return next season after a successful debut during the 1995-96 running season.

Dates and races selected for the series are:
Oct. 6, Coconut Grove 5-Miler;
Nov. 4, Home Depot 10K Run;
Nov. 17, Rotary Half-Marathon;
Nov. 23, Fantasy of Lights 5K;
Dec. 1, Baby Boomer 10K;
Dec. 8, Boca Raton 10K;
Feb. 8, Boca Dare 5K;
March 22, Imperial Point 5K.

No first-year races are allowed in the Grand Prix.

The series was started to breathe new life into the South Florida running community. Aside from a few scoring glitches and one or two poorly-run events, the series accomplished what it set out to do. There was at least a 10 percent increase in runner turnout at each of the grand prix races.

In an effort to rejuvenate road racing and bring the South Florida running community together, the South Florida Grand Prix Running Series returns for the 1996-97 season.

After working out the bugs, improving the format and increasing the quality of prizes from $700 to $5,000

It is the first of 10 races in South Florida's only running series, sanctioned by USA Track and Field of Florida

Last year, there was a 20 to 25 percent increase in each of the series races.

Prizes at the conclusion of the series are awarded for the top three overall, Masters and Grand Masters runners, and top 3 in every five-year age group from 15-19 to 70-and-over. Awards are also given to the top teams in the team competition. Teams consist of five runners and compete in one of nine categories, up from five categories last year. Last year only first place was awarded.

"I have always felt that the running community down here was very poorly organized," said Tom Vladimir, South Florida Grand Prix Running Series chairman, and recently-named Road Runners Club of America south rep for Florida.

"The running community has not been able to do a lot for the runners because it's so disorganized. We want to unite the running clubs and start bigger events. Our next idea is to work on a big race where all the clubs are involved with organizing it.

The other series races through March 22 are:
Winternationals;
Rotary Half-Marathon;
Fantasy of Lights;
Boca 10K;
Home Depot Run;
Daily News Half-Marathon;
Boca DARE Run;
Race For the Cure in Miami;
Imperial Point 5K.

Only Palm Beach Runners Club events are not represented in the series.

The envelope please... Best race: Tamarac Turkey Trot.

For the third year in a row, this race is the prototype of what a good, old-fashioned road race should be by attracting more than 600 runners on Thanksgiving morning. It also showed why race officials Lauren Scott and Ed Doyle, and the City of Tamarac Recreation Division, may go from handscoring to computer scoring next year.

These days runners want whistles and bows for their money. It's not enough to run a course, especially in 5Ks, the most popular distance. Great food; great race T-shirt; entertainment;, plenty of water; cheery, helpful volunteers; and, accurate certified courses and race results are imperative if the running community is to grow. Health fairs such as the ones held at the Jingle Bell Jog 5K and inaugural Imperial Point 5K were great innovative ideas.

Best first-year race: Holiday Fantasy of Lights 5K, Tradewinds Park.

Kimeli, 33, who lives in Lansing, Mich., outkicked Jason Bodnar of Fort Lauderdale in the final few yards to win in 14:59.

Bodnar stepped on the computer chip mat first but Kimeli's chest was ahead of Bodnar whose time also was 14:59.

Sonja Friend-Uhl, 33, of West Palm Beach, topped an impressive women's field to win in 16:39. Stacie Alboucrek, 36, of Fort Lauderdale, looking for one final speed workout before Saturday's U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials at St. Louis, Mo., was second in 17:38.

The winners won $750 each. Race proceeds benefited ovarian cancer awareness and education.

Tim Hutchings, who is in a far better position than I to comment, wrote an article in Athletics Weekly last week in which he lamented the fact that many of today’s better runners are under-raced compared with the runners in the ‘80s. I think this is partly down to a fear of being found out. A lot of people tend to only race when they’re in really good form now, rather than using races as a way of finding form. Charlie Spedding writes about not being scared to race in his book ‘From Last to First’, much of which is concerned with the mental approach to running. Rather than attempting to avoid racing people who are better than you, or being scared to compete, he advocates seeing racing better runners as an opportunity rather than something to be feared.

The ‘focus’ Charlie refers to requires a bit more time. It means deciding what you want to do and then getting on with it. It means deciding to run twice a day, and accepting that running will become the punctuation to your day, the two bookends between which everything else fits.

This is an exercise anyone can do (you don’t have to be in a pub, but it helps). It makes you accountable to yourself, and it gives you something to refer back to. And it’s pretty simple. Get yourself a pad of paper and write “What do I want?”, “Why do I want it?” and “How much do I want it?” If you don’t know the answers to those questions, Charlie reckons, you’re unlikely to get the most out of yourself competitively. I’ve done my own version for this summer, but it’s not going on here. It’s one thing being accountable to yourself and quite another to make yourself accountable to eightlane message board posters! Having target races doesn’t mean that you don’t run other races, or that you don’t run the other races hard, but that you aim to really put pressure on yourself in the races where you want to get results.

As one of the Costorphine AC runners put it, ‘I don’t want to hear of any example of anyone being able to remember their own name within ten minutes of finishing a leg!’