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Sports

Local Woman Promotes Competitive Running Through Website

As the sport of running grows, so does the technology to keep up with the races and results.

Not all sports are covered equally. 

As newsroom sports staffs are continuously cutback, certain athletics have fallen by the wayside. That is the opinion of at least one online group, hoping to meet the demands of avid runners and track fans. 

Sandy Bush of Timonium is one of those trying to catapult running back into the spotlight. Bush is a runner, a “very leisurely” one as she’ll say, but it was her daughter’s track meets that inspired her to really get cross country and track some of the attention she believes it deserves.

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Bush is the co-director of Running Maryland, an organization that captures video and photographs of every track meet it can, focusing usually on high school and college meets, but also covering adult open races too. Just as importantly, they maintain painstaking splits and race results.

Running Maryland allows the families of runners to watch meets on a live feed, or re-watch races via online video. The website focuses on capturing the entire race on video, and not just the ending moment when someone actually wins it.

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Lots of families are grateful for the videos. “People will come up and say, ‘Oh thanks for being here.’” Bush said. “They’ll say, ‘Excuse me, when will this be online?  When will the videos be posted?’”

Bush started getting involved with the Running Maryland website when she would check it to see her daughter’s race results. As a mom with two other children and a job, she was not always able to watch her daughter’s meets in person.

Running Maryland was launched seven years ago by Brad Jaeger of Kingsville, MD, who has been involved with running for most of his life.

“There was a huge need for track and field to get some sort of coverage,”Jaeger said . “I knew with parents working now, and the way life is now, that parents weren’t getting a chance to watch their kids perform. It’s a way for them to see their kids running—through the videos, the photos, the stories. I want to make them feel like they’re actually there.”

The website has been gratifyingly far-reaching. It has received thank-yous from all over the world—from grandparents living abroad to fathers serving as soldiers in the Middle East. “We’ve gotten e-mails from people serving in Iran, saying, ‘Thank you, I got to watch my kids run in the state meet, live, while I’m over here serving my county,’” Jaeger said.

The website captures Jaeger’s philosophy in three simple sentences: “We make sure our cameras capture the person who comes in last in the same manner as the person who comes in first. To us, the position in which you finish isn’t what’s important. It’s the effort that we know every runner puts forth.”

Lots of runners locally are putting forth effort, and it’s not just students. Ericka Butler, manager and coach at Charm City Run’s Timonium location said, “People start running of all different ages, for all different reasons. Some people do it for the social aspect, some people do it because they want to be faster, some because they want to be healthy. I think it’s great seeing so may different kinds of people walk through our door.”

Butler enjoys watching new runners “catch the bug” of running, first starting to train for a simple 5k, and then ratcheting up to half marathon training and finally full marathons.

Her coaching as well as her store is there to help. “We do a lot,” she said. “We’re not big on pushing what we sell, but solving people’s problems when they come in.”

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