Cass County 5k for Health After Action Report

Finally! A race with weather that didn’t start cold! It was a beautiful morning out in Belton, MO for the Cass County Community 5k for Health. A bit of a drive for me from my place, but overall a wonderful race that I was glad to run for the first time.

The race started at about 55 degrees. Sunny Skies and not much wind to speak of. The staging area was a high school football stadium. That meant there was plenty of parking and plenty of space to hold all the runners, spectators, vendors, and race volunteers. The setup could not have been more perfect.

I thought this would be a teeny tiny 5k. I was definitely wrong. There was a great turnout for this race. Not many people ran it, but there was a great showing by the community folks who wanted to walk this race. The band from local high school Raymore-Peculiar came out to play the National Anthem. The band director was an old friend of mine. Not that she’ll ever read this, but Jen, they sounded great! With the National Anthem done, we were off!

Side note. The National Anthem was done and we were at 7:59am. The race was set to start at 8:00am. We were ready, everything was a go, so they started the race early. Job well done! I honestly hate it when races start late, so an early start was wonderful. Thank you!

Off we flew out of the football stadium and into the high school parking lot. This race started with a very steady climb. The school itself was kind of down in a low lying part of the land. My only complaint with this race that I will voice on the podcast was the running in the first mile and a half. I understand not wanting to spend money on a police presence to close down roads, but having runners only running on sidewalks is problematic. Sidewalks are narrow and do not allow for easy running or passing of any sort. It was a very “single file” situation and that makes things a little more difficult. That is just nitpicking, but it was something that irked me just a touch.

After doing three fourths of a lap around the entire school complex, the race then took us down onto a paved walking trail through a very pretty park. There was a frisbee golf course setup in this park, so there were quite a few folks out enjoying a round on a beautiful morning. The park path actually allowed us some more space for running, so that was nice.

Once the park was completed, the last quarter mile was back on school property with a nice downhill to the finish line. There was a cheerleading squad lining the last bit of the course, cheering everyone on to the finish. That was a nice little motivation to get your last kick out.

Once the race was complete, the block party was one. There were food, drinks, and vendors galore. This was a fun way to spend some time on a Saturday morning. Two sneakers up for this race! It was my third race in a row where no medals were offered though. This is a long drought! My next race though will yield some bling though! May 14th we will be in Bucyrus, KS for the last ever Running with the Cows Half Marathon.

We’ll have all the details of the emotional goodbye to the Cows in next week's blog. As always, thank you for reading!

Kyle