Notebook

This year’s Bloomsday T-shirt won mixed reviews from runners. While most liked the design, they weren’t sure they liked the color - or weren’t even sure what, exactly, the color is.

“Tan? Khaki? I don’t know,” said Don Fry of Boise.

“No, it’s not puce,” said one runner to a pal as they tried to come up with a fitting description. Other color guesses included mocha, camouflage and taupe.

“I think it’s ugly - kind of a greeny-brown,” said Kellie Oester of Vancouver, Wash. “But the design is nice.”

One runner set a Bloomsday record of 109. That wasn’t his finishing time. It was his body temperature.

Judy Demand, who has supervised the finish-line aid station for 20 years, said it was the highest Bloomsday temperature she ever had recorded.

Medical workers wrapped the dehydrated man in cold towels and sheets, gave him four quarts of intravenous fluids and took him to a hospital.

He probably didn’t drink enough water before the race - a common mistake on cool Bloomsdays, medical workers said.

Then someone recognized him as a Valley Hospital and Medical Center employee.

“He isn’t embarrassed yet,” said Demand, “but he probably will be.”

Less than a half-mile from the finish line, volunteers from Group Health Northwest and St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute were distributing tongue depressors with petroleum jelly on them.

“We pass them out for chafing, dry lips, wherever people may need to use it,” volunteer Erlene Pickett said.

While Vaseline use ends there for most, Pickett said there is at least one runner every year who swallows the gooey stuff during the race.

It happened again Sunday.

“This guy runs by, grabs a stick and swallows the stuff,” Pickett said. “It’s the sickest thing.”

To their knowledge, Pickett and other volunteers said, swallowing a small amount of petroleum jelly isn’t harmful. But they didn’t know if eating it has any benefits for runners.

All Debbie Bridge wanted was a T-shirt.

A Bloomsday volunteer for many years, Bridge was diagnosed earlier this month with leukemia.

During treatment last week, her kidneys failed. Now she’s at Sacred Heart Medical Center, where she can hardly speak, let alone be pushed in a wheelchair.

Because of Bloomsday’s “no finish, no T-shirt” rule, Bridge’s wish wouldn’t have been fulfilled Sunday if it hadn’t been for 14-year-old Brandon Dailey.

His mother, Teresa Flansaas, had worked with Bridge for five years. When Flansaas told her son about Bridge’s illness, the boy immediately volunteered.

“I just wanted to be nice and help somebody out,” said the Shaw Middle School eighth-grader. “It made her happy.”

Brandon signed up for the race Saturday in Bridge’s name. He finished Bloomsday in an hour and 41 minutes. Then he delivered the T-shirt to a grateful Bridge.

Not everyone thought the weather was race-perfect.

Wheelchair racer Melody Williamson’s teeth chattered as she rolled through the T-shirt line.

“It was cold!” said Williamson, a California resident accustomed to 70-degree race weather.

Threatening clouds also prompted makeshift rain gear that worried at least one mom.

Sue Kuhn of Cheney shook her head as she watched runners pull on Hefty trash bags with holes cut out for their arms and necks.

“We teach our kids not to put bags over their heads, and then we use all these bags,” she said. “It’s scary.”

Doomsday Hill is as much a challenge for the ears as the feet. Four radio stations parked their vans along the hill, blasting runners with classic rock, teeny-bopper rock, country and undefinable “soft hits” - all from scratchy speakers.

The Loose Change trio kept water-station volunteers grooving to the Beach Boys and Elvis. A couple tapped tambourines in rhythm to the Native American music playing on their portable stereo.

Near the bottom of the hill, Lance Roethle endlessly tapped bongos. It’s his ministry, he said.

“God said, ‘Go down to that Bloomsday course and play and pray for the people,”’ Roethle said.

His song went from upbeat to coaxing as the crowd slowed to a walk.

“You have to push them up the hill,” Roethle said of the stragglers.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = From staff reports Jeanette White, Kevin Blocker, Kristina Johnson, Virginia de Leon, Alison Boggs, Dan Hansen and Jim Camden contributed to this report.