flrunners.com Invitational 8: New Venue, Pasta Banquet with Olympian Guests

This will be our eighth year now hosting the flrunners.com Invitational. From the humblest beginnings back in 2000 to growing to become the largest, most elite, and most anticipated meet of the year in Florida. I have always tried to maintain the ideal that I set forth when it first started: to make this meet something special and more than just another race on the schedule. The flrunners.com Invitational always has maintained a unique atmosphere, grassroots feel even with 5000 athletes competing, and always treats you to a good show!

In 2007, we are moving to Chain of Lakes Park in Titusville, which is 45 minutes east of Orlando near the Kennedy Space Center. The facility may be familiar to some people as it hosted the state meet in 2000. The only difference is everything! Back then there was a swampy orange grove behind Brevard Community College, which was called a cross country course! Now the county has built a beautiful park with nature-filled lakes that have dried up the area. There is a lookout tower for viewing from above. Runners will cross over bridges, across and around the lakes. Spectators will have full access to the course and be able to see the runners for almost the entire race.

In keeping with always trying to one-up myself from the meets of previous years, this year we are introducing something new. We will be hosting a pasta banquet on Friday night at the course. So that means that you won't even have to leave to get your dinner—it will be available buffet style in the gym of the community college, right in front of the course.

Included with the dinner tickets will be our post-dinner guest speakers. We will feature at least two guest speakers: Congressman Jim Ryun and Keith Brantly. Ryun of course needs no introduction, he is a three-time Olympian (silver medalist) and former world record holder in the 880, 1500, and Mile. He was the first high schooler to break 4-minutes in the mile and his high school mile record of 3:55.3 stood for 36 years until Alan Webb broke it just a few years ago. Brantly is a Florida native who competed for Team USA in the marathon at the 1996 Olympic in Atlanta. He was one of America's finest distance runners in the 80s and 90s and has a marathon PR 2:12:31 set in 1998.

The two Olympians will mingle beforehand during the races, give short presentations at the banquet, and then we will open the floor up to questions. We'll give coaches and athletes the chance to ask them about training, the Olympics, diet, and life in general. We are very excited to be able to offer this! Seating will be limited to the first 750 to purchase tickets and will probably sell out in advance. The ticket price will be $15, which will include the meal and the speakers. We will have these tickets available starting in June.

We have some other exciting things to announce about the meet that are “still on the cooker” at the moment, but let's just say this is going to be by far our best event ever!  Meet registration and information will be posted in June, so look for that.  More to come!

TENTATIVE MEET SCHEDULE (Subject  to Change)