Falmouth Road Race
| Falmouth Road Race | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Location |
Woods Hole to Falmouth, Massachusetts 
|
| Distance | 7 miles (11 km) |
| Primary sponsor | New Balance |
| Established | August 15, 1973 |
| Official site | www |
| Participants | 12,800 |
The Falmouth Road Race is an annual 7-mile (11 km) road race on Cape Cod from Woods Hole, a village in the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, to Falmouth Heights.
The race organizer is the Falmouth Road Race, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization who puts on the race each year with proceeds to benefit local charities. It has its own logo as well. The race director is Dave McGillivray of DMSE Sports, Inc.
New Balance, an athletic footwear and apparel company, became the title sponsor of the race in 2011.
The race was the idea of Tommy Leonard, an avid runner and popular bartender in Boston and Falmouth. During the 1972 Summer Olympics Leonard closed his bar in order to watch Frank Shorter win the first Olympic marathon for the United States since 1908. After Shorter won the marathon Leonard was quoted as saying "Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could get Frank Shorter to run in a race on Cape Cod?" One year later, in the summer of 1973, with the help of a local high school track coach John Carroll, and the town's recreation director Rich Sherman, the first Falmouth Road Race was run by approximately 100 people. The next year there were 445 runners, and the year after that Frank Shorter joined 850 other runners in the race, bringing Leonard's wish true. Today the New Balance Falmouth Road Race is considered one of the premier non-marathon races in the country, if not the world, attracting over 10,000 runners each year. The field of runners typically includes many of the best American and international runners, including both past and future Olympic athletes.
More people apply for places than can be accommodated in the race, so a random selection process is held to select the field of runners. The application period is a short window of time during the first half of May. Applications must be submitted online at the race web site. A number of places are specially reserved for Falmouth residents. Five runners, Mike Bennett, Tom Brannelly, Don Delinks, Ron Pokraka and Brian Salzberg, have officially completed every Falmouth Road Race.
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Wikipedia