New race off and running Saturday

By Shane Frederick
Free Press Staff Writer

Fri, May 16 2008

— Scott Rassbach has more than a little experienced trail racer.
A cross country runner in high school and college, the Mankato doctor once completed a 50-kilometer race on a trail covered in eight inches of snow.
“Seventy-five of us started, but only 25 of us finished,” Rassbach said. “It took over nine hours. That’s a long time to run.”
On Saturday, Rassbach and his wife, Rita, are putting on a trail race that, they say, will be challenging but hardly as daunting as others they’ve experienced.
The “5 at 7 Trail Race” will be the first race of its kind in the Mankato area. It will be 5.1-mile run along the hiking and mountain-bike trails of Seven Mile Creek County Park.
“The park up there and the trails are just perfect,” said Rassbach, who runs the course weekly. “It will be a challenge, definitely, but it’s not prohibitive.”
Rassbach, a family practice doctor at ISJ Clinic-EastRidge, was required to do a community health project as part of his residency, which he is completing this spring.
Since running is his hobby — he has completed Ironman triathlons, marathons and other races — organizing a race seemed like a no-brainer.
It’s a project, Rita said, that her husband “has put his heart into.” Proceeds from the race will be donated to the Echo Food Shelf.
Putting the race in the woods, Scott Rassbach said, is a change of pace from the area’s many road races and triathlons. The 5 at 7 will be on a hilly course that runs through the park’s wooded and bluff areas.

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