Mud and Fun to highlight Saturday’s Cape Charity Run
A fun event this weekend in Cape Coral looks more like boot camp than a charity fund-raiser.
Runners in the Craze 5K event on Saturday will cruise a street course, but also sidetrack to a series of obstacles, finishing the race splashing into a huge mud pit. There is also a scheduled children’s event. Five kilometers is just over three miles.
Sponsors say it’s the first such event in southwest Florida and it already has 500 runners signed up for the 11 a.m. start. The event host said participants may run alone, in groups, wear costumes, any variation of distance running deemed family friendly. Do expect to get wet and filthy. The event is at Cape Christian, on Chiquita Boulevard just north of Veterans Parkway.
“This isn’t a timed raced,” said Chad Woolf, director of Not in My City, the event host. “It’s meant to be a lot of fun.”
The centerpiece of the Craze 5K event is a 1,500-square-foot mud pit, filled with 6,000 gallons of water and several tons of topsoil.
Participants will wind on and off a road course as they make their way through tire fields, down and under crawl areas, through large industrial tubing, over large climbing walls, balance beams and even across a huge, inflatable slip and slide.
After the main race, there will be a one-mile run for children ages 10 and under. Children can participate in the main run as long as they are with a parent or legal guardian, Woolf said.
There is a $45 per runner registration fee, $40 for groups of two or more, $20 for children.
Proceeds will benefit Not in My City, a Cape Christian outreach. The non-denominational church was founded in 1987.
The 5K event also will introduce Cape Christian’s new Fellowship Park, a new outdoor recreational and community space that is planned for opening Easter Sunday. The project is under construction.
Not In My City puts hope within reach for families in southwest Florida by providing residents with a community resource guide, mentoring at-risk youth, and providing services for married couples and families in crisis.
The organization has recently expanded to pilot a foster family visitation program with Children’s Network, and will be opening a full-service family counseling center and addiction recovery program by the fall.
The Craze 5K is a family event that is meant to raise funds and awareness for the Not In My City organization.