Escapee: I ran Bloomsday from 1989 thru 1999. I had to stop running after that. My last training run was on April 4th, 2000. It just hurt too much to run anymore. In 2002, I entered Bloomsday at the last minute, walking most of it, trying to run some of it. And afterwards, I had waay too much pain. I couldn’t walk for almost a week. When I was in shape for running, Bloomsday was almost like a big Runners’ Party. But in the 2002 Bloomsday, my gout flared way up, I was totally out of shape, and hadn’t trained for it, so my advice is, if you’re gonna enter it, and you’re not in shape for it, don’t decide to run it at the last minute.

Question: Why do you enjoy running Bloomsday? And/or: Why do you avoid Bloomsday?