Just as the True/False Film Fest is no ordinary film festival, its accompanying 5K charity run is just as entertaining and unique.
The True Life Run blends a 5K race through downtown Columbia with challenges and obstacles meant more to entertain runners than to distract them.
Every year during True/False, runners from Columbia and elsewhere take part in the run to raise money for the True Life Fund. The fund raises money for the subjects of one documentary at the festival each year.
In 2014, the festival raised $23,000 for the women who were the subject of “Private Violence,” a film about domestic abuse.
This year, the festival has selected “The Look of Silence” as its recipient. The film tells the story of an Indonesian man struggling to speak out against the genocide that took place in his country in the mid-1960s. In the film, the main subject confronts the men who killed his brother during the genocide.
A significant fundraiser for True Life, the run costs $25 for participants to join this year. Considering 91 people raced in 2014, the fund should expect another prosperous year.
Patrick Hanson of Ready Set Results, the company that designs and times the course, said participants of the run are a mix of local runners and festival goers who vary greatly in age, ability and origin.
Kevin Stark, a Columbia resident who ran the race last year, explained that he liked the race because it was atypical of other runs he had done.
“It’s a big, goofy take on a typical race,” he said. “This one sounded like it was out of character, a bit off-beat, just like the festival.”
Because the course changes every year, runners can expect a different adventure each time they participate.
Challenges have been an important aspect of the event since it began. The first year of the event, there were two runs — a normal 5K and a challenge run. The next year, however, the festival and Ready Set Results decided to combine the two.
In the past, challenges have included running through a maze of newspapers, running up and down parking garages, playing hopscotch and chasing people dressed as rabbits for a time deduction.
“We try to keep it fun and different every year and don’t typically release all the different challenges until the week of the event,” Hanson said.
The course takes runners through these challenges in locations all over town, especially near the festival’s venues. Local businesses and landmarks usually make for important pit stops during the run.
“We try to use local things that people will know and people care about,” Hanson said.
Hanson also said MU has built up a strong relationship with both the festival and the run. In the past, the Quad, Stankowski Field and Lowry Mall have all been locations built into the event.
Because the run involves so much of downtown, setting everything up can only happen the morning of the run. At around 4 a.m. that Saturday, three or four workers begin to lay down the framework of the course. Volunteers then arrive at 7 a.m. to finish everything up.
“All these challenges are designed to kind of pop up out of nowhere and then be able to go away right after the race is over so there’s not a large infrastructure sitting waiting for us,” Hanson said.
At the end of the race, a male winner and a female winner each receive a Lux pass to next year’s festivities. But keeping with the run’s unusual nature, the winners are not determined by course time alone. Rather, it is determined by a combination of time and the runner’s success in challenges.
This year the run kicks off at 9 a.m. in Flat Branch Park.
