Beginning in July and running through the middle of August, there so many things to do in our area.

There is seemingly a triathlon every other weekend or some type of road race for runners.

Our summer baseball and softball programs have completed their regular seasons and are now in the postseason throughout the state of Michigan, as well as on the road to the likes of Newburgh, Indiana for regional competition.

I would like to congratulate our championship baseball and softball teams and wish them good luck as they continue down the tournament trail, but what I want to focus on are the events that surround us here in Cass and Berrien counties.

A stretch of four triathlons in just over a month began last Saturday in Sister Lakes.

The second of the four triathlons will be Saturday in Cassopolis on Diamond Lake. Two weeks later is the Eagle Lake Triathlon in Edwardsburg. We wrap up the local triathlon season with the Barron Lake event Aug. 24 in Niles.

I have immense respect for triathletes. I know I could never complete a course in the shape I am  in these days, and I sometimes wonder if I could have at any point in my life when I was more athletic.

After all, I loved riding a bike as a kid and would put in miles on whatever version I was sporting at the time. I only had one bike in my childhood that could have been used in a triathlon, and I wore out the tires on that thing peddling from place to place.

I never really enjoyed running for distance. I guess I never really got the attraction. I would run when I played football, baseball or basketball, but that only called for short bursts, and I was fine with that.

I loved to swim. I would have been in the water every day of my life if it were possible. I always wished that my parents still had their house on the lake when I was a teenager so that I could swim constantly. Swimming came easily for me, and I could do it for long stretches without much effort.

But putting all three together in a competition was not something we did when I was younger. Triathlons exploded long after I left high school and after any chance I would have had of even considered competing in one.

I also have great respect for those who get out there and run miles a day for the pure pleasure of it. I understand its value for our health, but it just never really interested me. If I ran, it was to get ready to play a sport in high school or during whatever game I was playing at the time.

But I have always enjoyed covering the sport. Perhaps that is because I came to Dowagiac where running is a passion. Right from the beginning, I was introduced to the sport for Leader Publications and I took to covering it because there were some great stories to be told.

I miss when Southwestern Michigan College was the home of the NJCAA Marathon Championships. You want to talk about some great stories. To see what those runners went through in order to prepare their bodies and minds to run 26-plus miles in the summer was something to behold.

I enjoyed how the entire community of Dowagiac came together to make the runners from various junior colleges across the United States feel right at home. They treated them as if they had lived here all their lives and showed the type of small-town community values that are missing in today’s society.

Then there was Steve’s Run, or the Original Road and Trail Race, as it was called when I started covering it for the newspaper.

What amazed me the most was the number of people who flocked to Dowagiac to compete in the race. They would come back year after year to compete. Generations of families would come to Dowagiac each July to run the 10K and 5K races. Heck, a couple even got married here one summer.

It even earned the title of the “Best Race in Michigan” by a running magazine.

Scott Novak is sports editor for Leader Publications. He can be reached at scott.novak@leaderpub.com