Community vibe appeals to Ukrainian
Halfway up Doomsday Hill on Sunday morning, Oksana Nikolaienko needed no translator.
The 35-year-old visitor from Kershon, Ukraine, communicated her feelings as clearly as any other first-timer tackling the most notorious stretch of Spokane’s 31st Lilac Bloomsday road race.
“Ooof!” she said, taking a deep breath and slowing from a peppy run to a moderate walk.
She circled both arms overhead, took another deep breath and squinted ahead at the 5-mile marker so far away.
“Five miles!” said Nikolaienko in halting English. “To finish 5 miles! Ah!”
In the end, the editor who works for Grivna, a weekly newspaper in Ukraine, was among the 40,323 runners, walkers and wheelchair users to complete the 7.46-mile – 12-kilometer – course on a bright spring morning.
For her, the event capped a weeklong tour that was primarily about journalism, but also about community. Nikolaienko was part of a five-member newspaper exchange delegation that returned a visit by Spokesman-Review Editor Steven A. Smith and Online Director Ryan Pitts to Ukraine last month.
Learning about U.S. journalism was important, but so was experiencing one of Spokane’s central cultural events, she said.
“The very idea that so many people come and run – it pushes them together and unites them,” Nikolaienko said before the race, speaking through her interpreter, Yuriy Odnovyunenko, 22. “I wanted to take part from the inside, to see how it’s run. It’s one thing to watch from far way. It’s another thing to be part of the people who run.”
That’s a sentiment shared by many of the home-grown Bloomsday runners.
A few feet away from Nikolaienko, Rob Walter waited in the mob of orange-tagged runners shivering at the 47-degree start of Sunday’s race.
Walter, 46, has run Bloomsday 16 or 17 times – exactly how many he can’t remember. The Spokane man said he’s not a regular runner by any means; he just comes out once a year for a dose of community spirit.
“It’s almost like not to do it is a sin,” Walter said. “It’s a tradition.”
For Jackie Curran, 59, of Lake Oswego, Ore., passing on the Bloomsday tradition meant chaperoning her 9-year-old grandson, Gavin McMinn, along the course.
“He started doing this in a stroller,” Curran said as the pair jogged slowly toward mile 3. “I’ve been running Bloomsday for 12 years.”
Whether they were veteran or newbie Bloomies, racers were cheered by supporters along the course.
Nikolaienko expressed delight at the accordion-playing Elvis impersonator, the hip-wriggling belly dancers, and the neighborhood kids using squirt guns and water hoses to cool down the passing pack.
By the time she got to mile 7, though, Nikolaienko shared the view of a woman in the crowd who said: “It’s going to feel so good to stop!”
As she passed under the balloon arch that signaled the finish, the guest from Ukraine struggled to find the words to sum up the day, the satisfaction of completion, the sense of community in the crowd around her.
“It’s beautiful, wonderful,” she said, her hands gesturing toward the throngs on the Monroe Street Bridge. “It’s, it’s …”
And then she stopped. No translation necessary.