Falmouth Road Race
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The CIGNA Falmouth Road Race is an annual 7-mile road race on Cape Cod from Woods Hole, a village in the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, to Falmouth Heights. 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 towns 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 CIGNA Falmouth Road Race is considered one of the best 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.
Entry. Traditionally the race is oversubscribed, meaning far more people apply for places than can be accommodated in the race. The application period is a usually a short window of time during the first half of May. (In 2005 applications could be made by internet; in 2006 the race reverted to mail-in applications.) A number of places are specially reserved for Falmouth residents.
Course Description. The course of the race has scarcely changed since its inception, with a starting line by the Captain Kidd Restaurant & Bar in Woods Hole, and a finish by the Falmouth Heights beach (near the former site of The Brothers Four tavern, where Tommy Leonard tended bar). From the start corral, one races up a gradually steepening incline and into a narrow wooded road, emerging onto a long curved coastal stretch that runs by Nobska Light, along a hot beach on Martha's Vineyard Sound, and past the charming estates of Belvidere Plains, before turning inland toward the center of Falmouth town; finally looping back to the shore route for one last quarter-mile hill that crests just before the finish.
Before 2006, promotional materials usually described the CIGNA Falmouth Road Race as a 7.1-mile event. It is now billed as a 7-miler. By 2003 storms and road repairs had made minor changes to the route, and a new USATF-certified course measurement was taken. [1] This showed the course to be a hair short of 7 miles. In 2005 the organizers extended the finish line slightly to bring it close to the traditional course length. But the following year they moved it back again, for an exact 7 miles.
CIGNA, a health services company based in Philadelphia, became the title sponsor of the race in 2006.
