KALAMAZOO, MI - The Kalamazoo Marathon won’t wind through city streets in 2021, as the annual springtime race has been canceled for the second consecutive year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The series of races collectively known as the Borgess Run for the Health of It, which includes the Kalamazoo Marathon, along with the Borgess Run Camp training program have all been postponed until May 2022.
“Our commitment to the safety and well-being of our participants and volunteers made this decision unavoidable,” Ascension Borgess President Peter Bergmann said in a press release. “We value our relationship with the community that has allowed us to bring this commitment to life over the past 40 years. And we have every expectation that the current health challenges we face will embolden our efforts to recommit to this important part of our mission.”
The Borgess Run for the Health of It started in 1980, while Run Camp started in 2000 and the Kalamazoo Marathon in 2011. The series of races continued uninterrupted for 40 years until 2020, when the first wave of the pandemic forced Borgess to cancel the early-May races on March 14.
While COVID-19 vaccine distribution has started and positive cases have been decreasing across most of the state, a November spike has made things difficult for hospitals, and on Wednesday, Michigan’s death toll from the virus surpassed 11,000.
As 2021 approached, Borgess Run race director Blaine Lam said it became “increasingly obvious” it must be canceled.
“When this thing went down on March 14, we had no idea what we were up against, and there was a lot of scrambling for the 2020 race, and it’s pretty much been a process,” Lam said. “The fact that Ascension Borgess is our sponsor, and they’ve been running upstream or swimming upstream or climbing upstream or whatever you do on other important health care matters, there just there wasn’t a lot of choice... We would have said something sooner but we don’t like to make premature announcements; we’ve seen a lot of runs that have set new dates or postponed or done this or done that, and we decided that, once we made an announcement, it would stick.”
While the 2020 Borgess Run went virtual, with runners completing a certain distance within a designated window, that won’t be an option in 2021.
“We had something like, I believe 2,300 people in last year’s virtual run, but quite frankly, virtual runs are having a hard time generating excitement because the people really want to have the sense of having an event,” Lam said. “One of the things that really grieves us is not to be associated with our good friends at Run Camp. That’s pretty important to the whole scene, and so we just got the word to our Run Campers -- at least our Run Camp leaders -- that this isn’t going to go next year.”
While the decision to host the race rests with Ascension Borgess, not the race director, Lam said from everything he is hearing, the national health care system is committed to bringing the event back for its 41st installment in 2022.
“They’ve shown absolutely zero reservation about moving forward with this,” Lam said. “I have never heard them waver on this issue, and it’s such an important and unique community event that they just had no plans and walking away from it. It was simply a matter of what we can accomplish in 2021.”
While a lot of hospitals are struggling financially amid the pandemic, Lam pointed to Borgess’ decision to refund entry fees from last year’s race as evidence it is invested in the community event.
“We benefited from Ascension Borgess’ determination to give our runners refunds in 2020′ a lot of races didn’t, and we don’t blame them for that, but Ascension Borgess really stepped up because they knew that they wanted to maintain the relationship with runners and with the community, and they also have a real debt of gratitude to all the sponsors.
“We’ve got something like 77 sponsors who have pitched in with Ascension Borgess to make this thing happen, so we’re communicating with sponsors now about that.
“It’s one of those things where you know some of those sponsors, quite frankly, are going to be challenged to come up with the kind of dollars to help put this on. So, in 2022, it’s not that it will be without its challenges -- it’s always different kinds of challenges -- it’s just a matter of how the community pulls back together to make this happen.
“I can tell you from the outpouring that I’ve had, even by people who kind of felt this was coming, is that it’s so important to community that they wanted Ascension Borgess to continue it, and as I said, they have not wavered on that a bit.”
Blaine said the 2022 Borgess Run will be held in early May, with the Kalamazoo Marathon likely to take place Sunday, May 1 or May 8.
Also on MLive:
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For more info on COVID-19 in Michigan, visit https://www.mlive.com/coronavirus
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December 18, 2020 at 04:04AM
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2021 Kalamazoo Marathon, Borgess Run canceled, set to return in May 2022 - MLive.com
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