Professional Road Runners Organization championship returns to Quad-City Times Bix 7

It started out in the 1990s with 12 major road races, including a couple of marathons, but now has only six member races. It no longer involves nearly as much prize money as it once did.

But the organization, now more than 30 years old, still serves an important purpose in the sport of road racing. And it will hold its national championship race in Davenport three weeks from now, on July 25, at the 52nd annual Quad-City Times Bix 7.

“It’s a good organization and I’m glad that it’s continuing,’’ said former Bix 7 race director Ed Froehlich, who was the president of PRRO when it first launched in 1995.

“Anything we can do to combine with other events is good. It’s hard to get events to join hands because they’re individual races. That’s the first interest of every race is your own.’’

The Bix 7, now under the direction of Michelle Juehring, has become involved with PRRO again after about a 25-year absence. It has joined with the Gate River 15k, the Cherry Blossom 10-miler, the Lilac Bloomsday 12k, the Steamboat Classic 4-miler and the Utica Boilermaker 15k to form a circuit that offers enhanced opportunities for elite runners to win prize money.

For the past several years, the Bix 7 has offered $50,000 in prize money, including $12,500 to both the men’s and women’s champions, but PRRO has a bonus structure that can add significantly to the runners’ paydays.

Runners who are the defending PRRO champion, who have won any of the other PRRO races this season or are currently in the top five in the circuit’s points standings qualify for a $10,000 super bonus if they win the Bix 7.

If a runner wins the Bix 7 but has not won any of the other PRRO races this season, they receive a $2,500 bonus. PRRO event champions from this season can earn an additional $1,500 just for finishing anywhere from second through 10th in the Bix.

It’s not as lucrative as when PRRO first began in the 1990s. Champions in PRRO championship races back then, including the 1997 Bix 7, earned $25,000.

“Most of the prize money comes from the individual races now,’’ said Don Kardong, a longtime director of Lilac Bloomsday who is now the president of PRRO.

The origins of PRRO extend all the way back to 1981 with the inception of the Association of Road Racing Athletes. ARRA was an alliance of American distance runners who sought to promote their sport, increase visibility and boost prize money.

Kardong was still a competitive runner then, only five years removed from a fourth-place finish in the 1976 Olympic marathon. He was vitally involved in the development of ARRA, which was only moderately successful.

“We had an idea that there would be a circuit and the circuit would basically be owned by the athletes,’’ he said. “But that didn’t work so well. At one point, I think we had maybe 20 races.’’

In 1995, ARRA joined with the directors of many of the country’s top road races to form PRRO. Froehlich was the first president, with Kardong serving as vice president, long-time Cherry Blossom director Phil Stewart as secretary and Bolder Boulder 10K race director Bill Reef as executive director. Two professional runners, Steve Jones and Kim Jones (no relation), also were on the board of directors along with Jeff Darman, the founder and director of several races.

There were 12 races in the original alliance, including five of the current members (all except Gate River) along with the Peachtree 10K, Bolder Boulder, the Gasparilla Distance Classic, the Tulsa Run, the Sallie Mae 10K, the Houston Marathon and the Twin Cities Marathon.

There was an immediate and radical bump in prize money at the outset. The first four PRRO championship races, starting with Lilac Bloomsday in 1996 and Bix in 1997, offered a first prize of $25,000.

“At the time, it was a good group, but it fell off because there weren’t more races that got involved in it,’’ Froehlich said.

The alliance began to unravel within a couple of years. The problem then, as it is now, is that all the races have their individual objectives and priorities, and those don’t necessarily align with those of other events.

Froehlich said the Bix initially became involved with PRRO in hopes of boosting distance running in the United States and that goal was quickly drowned out as runners from Kenya and other foreign countries thoroughly dominated the circuit.

“We got out when Boulder got out,’’ Froehlich said. “We didn’t think it was going in the right direction and it was costing us extra money to do it.’’

The Bix 7 eventually addressed its objective by holding American championship races in conjunction with USA Track and Field in 2002, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2017 and 2023.

Kardong said many of the PRRO races now offer prize money for American runners along with a generous portion of money that is open to anyone. The six races on the circuit have a combined purse of $440,000 with about a third of that — $148,000 — designated specifically for U.S. athletes.

“We have a lot of foreign runners participating but also some top Americans,’’ Kardong said. “I think we have a pretty good structure now.’’

After Bix, Bolder Boulder and other races pulled out, the PRRO circuit got down to as few as four members at one point and its championship first prize dipped as low as $6,200 in 2017. There were races involved that no longer even exist.

“It was a little unstable,’’ Kardong said. “Something would happen and somebody would leave.’’

Three races — Bloomsday, Cherry Blossom and Utica — remained in the organization through all of the upheaval. The Bix 7 became involved again last year and PRRO added a sixth member in December when Steamboat came on board.

“All of the races we have now have been around for about 50 years so there is some stability in the group now,’’ Kardong said.

Kardong said he thinks PRRO ultimately could get back to having 8 to 10 races.

“We’re not actively looking right now because we’re sort of implementing some of the things we’ve done this past year,’’ he said, “but there’s some races out there that we’d love to have that would fit under the tagline we have of America’s classic road races.

“We’d love to get more but it’s always a challenge because most races, including all the ones we have now, are organized mostly for the local runners and their local market.’’

PRRO has added a feature designed to attract some of those local runners, too. The new PRRO-lific Finisher Program provides the opportunity for non-elite runners to win a limited edition medal if they complete all six of the races on the circuit.

“We’ve always catered to the elite runners but this is a way to reward ordinary runners,’’ Phil Stewart said.

Kardong said it’s still hard to get races to think of themselves as major international sports events in addition to being great community events.

“It’s not been an easy sell but we have gotten some decent traction the last couple of years,’’ Kardong said. “If we can get to eight, I think that’s about where we want to be.’’

Through all the ups and downs, Kardong feels PRRO has had a positive effect on the sport of road racing.

“Going back to the beginning with ARRA, it was ‘Let’s get payment for performance,’ and that all happened,’’ he said. “We try not to pat ourselves on the back too much but when we saw the Dream Team, the basketball team, in the Olympics, we said ‘Well, they’re there because of something we did.’ We allowed professionals into the Olympics. We did accomplish a lot of what we set out to do.’’