What brought me to this small town race was its relative proximity to Jerusalem (about 1 hour away, West and a little bit South) and convenient time, at the end of April.
Course Overview
Merotz Shafir is a flat, semi-trail run through the plowed fields of the religious communities of Ein Tsurim, Shafir and Merkaz
Shapira. Though it starts and finishes on the road, most of the race track takes place over packed dirt, with nothing around but nature and some paragliders.
Each of the heats run in a loop over a fairly flat course. While the courses were mostly on packed dirt, I wouldn't consider it a trail run. The only technical element came from just trying to stay on top of the most tightly packed dirt in the marks left by tractor treads.
Each of the heats run in a loop over a fairly flat course. While I wouldn't consider it a trail run, there was an advantage to having some background running over uneven terrain, looking for the fastest point between close turns and knowing to look out for the most solid dirt to run on.
Tracks
There were 3 competitive heats of 10k, 5k and 2.3k. Additionally there was a Mother and Stroller 1.5k run and a Community 500m run. For the first time in my experience, they offered a women's start 2 minutes after the main start for the competitive heats. 🤷🏻♀️
The 10k race contained a small but competitive field of runners. The 10k for instance had only 116 runners total, only 20 of whom were women. And they were fast! The top 5 female finishers completed the race in under 51 minutes.
The 10k track formed an uneven figure 8, around fields and past aquifers. There wasn't much in the way of points of interest and water bottles were dispensed every 2.5k.
The 5k track is more of an out and back, mostly following the Lakhish River.
The 2.3k goes around the first loop that each of the 2 longer heats includes.
Atmosphere
The race was well organized and and friendly. Most of the participants were from local groups, with some delegations from larger running groups in other parts of the country. As with most s
maller races throughout the country, Merots Shafir is named in memory of a young person who passed away. Tamar Ariel, whose father spoke at the start of the awards ceremony, was an Israeli Air Force navigator in a combat unit, the first religious female soldier to serve in that role. She tragically died during an avalanche while trekking in Nepal in October 2014.
Organization
The organization of the race by Tri+ and the local council was overall decent. The course was well marked and there was enough water and enough people to hand out the water at each of the stations along the route. Check in on the morning of the race went smoothly even though they asked for a text message confirmation that I never received (neither did anyone in the line around me.) I began warming up about 20 minutes before the race start, and about halfway through I caught an announcement that the start time would be delayed by 15 minutes. That was annoying and I probably burned off a little too much energy with an extended warmup as a result.
My biggest disappointment though was that there weren't enough medals for the finishers. I finished about halfway through the pack of the first heat, and after catching my breath I tracked back to the finish line to look for a volunteer handing out medals, figuring I had been too exhausted to notice before. Many, but not all runners had one. When I asked a member of the production team they replied nonchalantly "they are gone."
To my great amusement, this race was small enough that a large number of runners such as myself came home with an age category trophy but no finisher's medal! The ratio of trophies awarded to runners was pretty high. In fact, there were only 3 women in my age category, so everyone got to step up to the podium. As silly as that made the trophy, I think it also sends an important message that you are a winner just for showing up!
Although it was a little bit cool for the season, I still appreciated that there were tents set up for shade in the area by the small Expo in front of the community council building.
In addition to trophies, there were prizes awarded for the top male and female finisher in the 5k and 10k events, as well as a prize awarded to the oldest finisher, who completed the 10k at age 77!
During the awards ceremony, one of the age category winners took the mic and made a point of saying that despite having completed dozens of marathons and even more smaller races, he considers Merots Shafir to be one of the prettiest.
Summary of Merots Shafir
Merots Shafir is a small pastoral race with a variety of events for all types: from parents pushing strollers, to school groups to competitive athletes. The course is quite flat but mostly on packed dirt, which means it's a nice lower impact run; however running off-road may result in slower than expected times for those used to running on asphalt.
Having not enough medals and perhaps too many age categories seemed like rookie errors for an event in its 12th year, but I still felt like the race was an overall positive experience.