ROSE CITY RUNNERS CLUB PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE PAGE   <-Club President Tom Gallagher

President's Column

Now that we are moving into the dark season, when running at night it is important for us to Be Seen! Here are some precautions to take while running at night.

We always need to think about safety and being seen at night. The most important thing is to make sure you are seen at night. Dark clothes and shoes can make you almost invisible to motorists at night, especially if you are trying to cross a busy road or if you are running along a narrow road without a footpath.

- Wear bright clothing and light colors. At the very least, wear a white t-shirt as a top layer. If you don’t have any, you should invest in wind breakers, tops and tights with reflective strips that are highly visible even on the darkest road to motorists.

- Alternatively, you can invest in a light weight reflective running bib in luminous green or yellow with reflective stripes around the middle. You can’t be missed in these cheap, but highly effective tops that tie at the sides. Even if you are padded up in many layers on the coldest night, they will still fit. 

Another option if some of your routes are along darker streets and roads is a head lamp, which will light up both you and the path. There are a number of designs that are small and compact enough to run with and bright enough to see and be seen. They are relatively inexpensive and could provide a novel solution to dark roads, particularly if you live in a rural area with few or no street lights.

Running is by no means a dangerous sport; you just need a bit of common sense.

Congratulations to Tom Hand, Vivian Wilson, Barry Lass, Karl Fenske and Lou Grunfelder for completing the Steamtown Marathon with excellent times that qualified all of you for Boston.

Remember, November 1, Daylight Saving Time ends, which mean that on Saturday November 7, our run starts at 9:00 AM instead of 8:30 AM.