It’s Week 7 of the 64th Annual Summer Series!

Week 7 is a 6-mile course that starts and finishes by the Traverse City Central Track.

This week is the handicap run! The faster you are, the longer you have to wait to start. Handicaps are determined from previous Summer Series runs. If this is your first event this year, no problem! We will assign a handicap for you based on an estimated 5k time or pace.

Handicaps, in sports and games, is a method of offsetting the varying abilities or characteristics of competitors in order to equalize their chances of winning.

This is a crowd favorite and very fun to watch. Most runners finish within a few minutes of each other. Don’t let the faster runners catch you (but try to catch the runners ahead of you). :)

Signup is free but required for this weekly event that happens 10 weeks in June-August. Everyone is welcome to run 1, 5, or all 10! You only need to signup once all summer.

Handicaps will be assigned. Will this be your first event of the Summer Series? We have a chart below that will give you a suggested handicap time based on an estimated 5K.

Handicap Starts

Your handicap is the time on the race clock when you are scheduled to start. The race clock begins at 0:00 and counts upward.

If there are few or no participants with the smallest handicaps, we may advance the race clock by up to 15 minutes rather than waiting for those early start times.

Please be ready to start up to 15 minutes before your handicap.

Example: If your handicap is 45:00, you would normally start when the race clock reaches 45:00. Since the race clock starts at 6:30 PM, that would normally be around 7:15 PM. However, if we advance the race clock, you could start as early as 7:00 PM. Please be ready anytime between 7:00 PM and 7:15 PM.

We'll determine whether to advance the race clock after checking in with participants before the start and will announce the decision before the race begins.