(Holloway Park photos by Roxanne Youngs)
Holloway Park is the new home of the FLRunners.com Invitational and will welcome over 300 teams and 3,000 athletes to Lakeland next weekend. The course suffered from damage to Hurricane Irma, but thanks to a recent clean up by members of the local and running community, the trails are looking better and better.
"They cleaned in record time," was posted on the Holloway Park Course Facebook group. In an hour and half, debris was cleared from 3 miles of trails, spectator trails, awards area and nature trail lot."
The post went onto thank the numerous organizations, groups, and individuals who made this possible.
"Thank you to Central Florida Sports Marketing for providing water, gatorade and snacks." the post read. "Thank you to coach's and runners from George Jenkins, Lakeland HS, Santa Fe Catholic, Lakeland Runners Club, McKeel Academy, Daniel Jenkins MS, Hardee Sole Crushers, Hardee HS, Southeastern University, Circle Christian and Tampa Bay HEAT. And we must not forget to thank the many individuals of the community that just showed up and got to work. Wow!"
Marc Zimmerman, Senior Sales and Events Manager for Polk County Sports Marketing, headed out to the course on Tuesday and was awed at what had transpired in the days following the clean up.
"I went back out to Holloway today," he said. "Amazing things have happened. The parking lot is completely dry. The trails are completely clear and dry. The staff will be working on grooming the areas that were affected by the equipment and are also actively mowing right now. At this point the park is mostly in the same shape as it was before the storm."
All this is great news for the 2017 FLRunners.com Invitational which brings the best competition from around the state, combined with one of the most challenging courses in Holloway Park, and a fun-filled atmosphere with vendors, sponsor Asics, and celebrity guest World Championship qualifier Johnny Gregorek.
(Holloway Park photos by Roxanne Youngs)
Holloway Park is the new home of the FLRunners.com Invitational and will welcome over 300 teams and 3,000 athletes to Lakeland next weekend. The course suffered from damage to Hurricane Irma, but thanks to a recent clean up by members of the local and running community, the trails are looking better and better.
"They cleaned in record time," was posted on the Holloway Park Course Facebook group. In an hour and half, debris was cleared from 3 miles of trails, spectator trails, awards area and nature trail lot."
"They cleaned in record time," was posted on the Holloway Park Course Facebook group. In an hour and half, debris was cleared from 3 miles of trails, spectator trails, awards area and nature trail lot."