Registration numbers are low, while emotions are running high.
As the Delta variant of COVID-19 made its late-summer surge across the country, Jim Stasaitis was grappling with how to stagger thousands of runners at the start of the UticaStasaitis is the race director for the event, a fixture on the summer racing calendar since 1978. Theforced the Boilermaker’s cancellation in 2020, and this year, the race was rescheduled from its usual July date to October 10.
As Stasaitis worked on how to keep runners socially distant at the start, the math wasn’t working out. Five runners, starting every five seconds, would be 60 runners per minute. For a race that normally draws more than 10,000 runners, athletes and volunteers would be out there for hours before the last person crossed the starting line.
Stasaitis gave up. Instead, he and the other race organizers instituted a rule that all runners must show proof of vaccination in order to race. No way around it—not even a negative test. The rationale? “We’re a health and fitness organization, and we want to keep everybody safe,” Stasaitis told“The very first email I got said, ‘Thank you very much for thinking of us and taking care of us,’” Stasaitis said. “I was excited for about 35 seconds, and after that it went downhill.” Subsequent emails called him a Nazi, a fascist, and one suggested they play the Russian national anthem instead of the Star Spangled Banner at the start.
The race committee forged ahead. Ten days before the race, the 15K had 5,334 entrants, down from 14,500, and the 5K had 1,473, down from the 4,500 runners in a typical year. They’ll go off in a mass start.
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