Tour de France-like event for running

I considered organizing such a race where I live in Mexico. The stages were going to be short (5-10km) and mostly uphill to the summits of scenic places. I also wanted to have a leaders jersey (singlet). I don't have a big support network, so I decided to pull the plug on it because I probably would've done 99% of the work and it wasn't worth all the work to put it on.

Volunteer State Road Race in Tennessee. It only goes on for 314 miles.

Also Marathon des Sables,,, in some godforsaken desert thing only 156 miles through 6 days.

Surprised no one has mention the Goofy Challenge at Disney World. The Hobbyjogger Mecca!

cano wrote:

Instead of Tour de France, someone should organize a Tour of Andorra, or Lichtenstein.

Andorra is too small, could ride the entire country in a day and there is only one major rode.

I think TdF goes through Andorra some years as well.

Nothing mentioned here is really a running equivalent of the Tour de France.

You've got to remember that some stages in the Tour are won by Sprinters! Yes, Sprinters - guys designed to ignite explosive power over a short distance to beat other bike sprinters.

What kind of pace would the running Tour have to be going at in order to facilitate stages which could be won by Sprinters?! The reason it works for cycling is of course because 90% of the Tour de France is really just a parade, slowly trundling along, waving to the crowd...

Now, you'd never get 100m / 200m guys able to become running Tour sprinters but maybe some 5k guys could plod along for 10/15 miles on a give stage (if the running peloton was moving slowly enough) then blast away at the end. Would be interesting to see how that worked out but obviously having guys running 20-30 mile stages (as an equivalent?) every day for three weeks isn't going to happen...

No..... a 'sprinter' in the Tour de France sense of the word is VERY different from a t&f sprinter. You couldn't pull track cyclists out of the velodrome and expect them to win even the flattest and calmest stages. Road cycling is a totally different beast to track cyling - not like getting a 5K/10K track guy to run a marathon (although that is actually quite difficult as well).

It would be neat to see a "king of the mountain" in running.

Er, yes, that's why I said 100 / 200m guys would not become Sprinters in this concept of a running tour. But yeah, the 5/10k guys would evolve as the most likely candidates to become running Tour "Sprint" stage winners (i.e. the equivalent of a Mark Cavendish for example) I think.

Remember - if they were doing 20/30 miles EVERY day, and had to complete every stage within a cut off, this wouldn't be run like some multi-stage Ultra. If it was like cycling, in terms of a survivable pace, you could see it like 18 miles plodding at 8 min mile+ pace, then, bang, with 5k to go the "sprinters" burst off the front...

Could you have running climbing specialists helping GC guys over climbs though? Not sure if there's a realistic analogue there.

Invite a mix of 800 meter to 10k runners. 60 total for elite division. Have open division to pay for event.

AM Day One- 5 equally seeded elite mile heats by PR. Points by ranked time.

PM Day One- 4k Xc race (course is hilly with hay bale steeple crossings). Points by finish

AM Day Two- 10k road race- Points by finish

PM Day Two- 400 meter elite heats by competition standing. Points by time.

He was a great runner, but Steve Brace never ran 2:08

A race was held across the United States two years in a row in (I think) 1928 and ‘29, organized by a chap named C. C. Pyle. It was called The Bunion Derby. The event was fictionalized in a semi-decent novel in the 1980s by Tom McNabb Called _Flannagan’s Run_. BBC Radio 4 aired a wonderful documentary about Peter Gavuzzi, an Italian-British Runner who ran both editions of the race. I think there has been some other historical work on the event.

Also worth noting, where I grew up in Northern Virginia, there was a tradition of “Ride and Tie” races in which a team of two humans and one horse would leap frog over hill and dale (and muddy creek) trying to be the first team to get all three mammals across the line first.

I have expected for a while that there will be a return of multi-stage footraces. All it needs is this generation’s Fred Lebow to pull it off.

Tour de Pain- Jacksonville, FL

3 races in 24 hours

https://1stplacesports.com/races/tdp/

I've thought about this concept for years now ... and here's my thoughts (and it picks up on this weekend festival style idea):

Duration: 4-5 days (1 stage per day)

Goal: To accumulate points as a team of about 6 runners

Each stage has three points categories up for grabs:

- GC (general classification = total accumulated time)

- Sprints (these would typically be held at the start of each stage over 400m to a mile but also you could have some intermediary or closing sections of stages where you are timed for that segment alone, not first across the line like Le Tour)

- Mountains (again, this is scored based on time taken to get from the bottom of the hill to the top, not first to the top like Le Tour)

Points would be allocated across the three categories and the main prize would be given to the winning team of six runners.

The sprinters and mountain runners have to finish the entire course, but they can basically jog the non-timed sections.

Each stage would be around 10-16k (6-10 miles) so the sprinters aren't too nailed from the distances and so the GC guys/girls can bounce back okay.

Thoughts?

No idea is a bad idea wrote:

Probably would be much more difficult since running is higher impact. Also, it would be much less of a tour since you can't travel as far in a single leg.

Nevertheless, it would be interesting to have the side competitions like King of the Hill or having a special jersey for the leg winners. Maybe the team competition would be fun to watch too.

Perhaps this already exists in some form.

It's interesting all the stage races people are mentioning. I'd only heard of the easter festivals (perhaps just on the Isle of Wight and Isle of Man) which had or have 3 or 4 races over a long weekend.

A better idea would be trying to replicate the Tour de France in the USA. I'm not sure which states would be best.

Japan's been doing races like that for over a hundred years. They're really popular.

survey says wrote:

Japan's been doing races like that for over a hundred years. They're really popular.

No it hasn't.

There have been Trans Continental races again since 1992. 8 of them across the US.

Since they are so difficult to organize they are not every year.

Here is a website of all of them.