Race Went From Baby Steps To Runaway Success Bloomsday’s Popularity Stunned Original Organizers
In the beginning, it took loads of hype, an Olympic hero and perfect timing. The city was aching for an encore to Expo. The running craze was just starting. And the mayor was reminiscing about the Boston Marathon whooshing past his childhood home.
Spokane’s first Bloomsday on May 1, 1977, was a startling novelty, a celebration of health and anarchy. City streets were sealed off like never before as 1,200 people stormed through town led by Olympic gold medalist Frank Shorter.
Sure, it should have been run in the morning instead of the afternoon in 80-degree heat. And the runners, a dozen of whom later writhed on the ground with heat stroke, weren’t interested in those hot sandwiches at the finish line.
But the news flash was that 1,200 people finished the run! Another 10,000 lined the course to watch! Plus, the race hauled in $8,000! The Lilac Bloomsday Run was suddenly declared the largest maiden road race ever.
Organizers marveled at the baby they’d delivered. But even the giddiest had no notion of how fast and huge it would grow.
Next Sunday, Bloomsday throws its 20th race. An expected record 60,000-plus people will run, stroll and roll through the scenic and hilly 7.45 mile course that winds past the modern Bloomsday headquarters on a Spokane River bluff.
And while the $8 entry fee is considered cheap, the race is now a big-money event. Merchants pay $500 for each of the 157 booths at the Bloomsday trade show. U.S. Bank is spending $30,000 to get its name printed on the sleeve of the T-shirt.
World-class racers vie for $100,000 in winnings. Total Bloomsday revenues will exceed $750,000 - a fifth of which will go to a massive and secretive T-shirt purchase for next year’s run. Bloomsday is now so large it has about 4,500 volunteers, 380 medical aides and its own Internet home page.
“You can’t fool 50,000 people to show up for a 7.5 mile race every year,” said Scott Douglas, editor of Running Times. “You have to be doing something extraordinary.”
But what? How did little Spokane become the host of the largest timed road race in the world? Bigger than the Boston Marathon. Bigger than the New York Marathon. Bigger than Atlanta’s Peach Tree Run?
There are so many reasons. Bloomsday founder Don Kardong is considered perhaps the nation’s premiere ambassador of road races. The course is ideal; long enough to challenge, short enough to prevent despair. And the T-shirts have become cult badges for fitness and courage.
There’s more.
It’s a community health event. It’s a party, a festive percussion of pounding feet and hearts. It’s a spring tradition, a family-reunion day. It’s getting your name, time and bragging rights printed in the newspaper. It’s …
“To run with so many people you lose your sense of how well or poorly you run. You’re just part of the flow, the sound of footsteps and breathing. You’re continuously aware you’re really not competing with anyone. You’re sharing something.”
That explanation comes from David Govedare, a Chewelah artist who sculpted a 40-person Bloomsday scene along Spokane Falls Boulevard in 1985.
As much as he’s studied the race, Govedare is still unable to pinpoint the reason it’s a rage. “I think it’s a mystery why Bloomsday is so provocative to us.”
Other Bloomsday philosophers say you have to start at the very beginning, with the idea.
The run was conceived in the old City Hall elevator, which was carrying Kardong, Mayor David Rodgers and Stephen Blaschke, from the Jaycees.
Kardong, then a boyish, sleek-as-a-deer 27-year-old, was fresh from the 1976 Olympics in Montreal where he finished fourth in the marathon.
Rodgers, in the final days of a decade as mayor, told Kardong he liked his idea of a city road run. Outside the elevator, Blaschke cornered Kardong and suggested the Jaycees might back the run as a civic project.
On April 4, 1977, Kardong and a few other backers met with city officials to sanction an event less than a month away.
The city manager and the police chief opposed the run. How could the city block off arterials? Who was going to pay the officers’ overtime?
Then the mayor spoke about the thrill of seeing the Boston Marathon as a child. He and his buddies had climbed trees to watch the race. The meeting mood shifted. The city officials suddenly agreed the run sounded reasonable.
The packaging of Bloomsday started with the first race. It was an event, a celebration. Not a race. The first poster offered as much explanation as anything ever has.
“It’s all for fun … for health … a mass celebration of running!! Cheering spectators … the greatest gathering of world-class distance runners ever in the Inland Empire. Run with the Stars.”
Then came the testimonials. “I was running down Riverside, there in the middle of that mob and I was crying,” one runner told a reporter after the first race. “I thought, for two hours doggone it, we’re taking over this town.”
Community leaders and organizations jumped in. First, came the Jaycees, then Medical Service Corp.
The health insurance company saw Bloomsday as an advertising gimmick to promote healthy lifestyles.
“We thought if you could sell exercise and diet the same way they sold cigarettes and pop we might have a reasonably good chance,” says Jim Lynch, former Bloomsday president and MSC public relations man.
The second Bloomsday was perhaps the most overwhelming, as the field grew almost five-fold to more than 5,000 people. Irritated runners waited in line, on the old course, to navigate a narrow path to the finish.
In 1979, the turnout doubled to 10,000 people. Bloomsday and city officials watched nervously as street lights on the Maple Street Bridge wobbled with the thunder of sneakers.
“The first four years absolutely taxed your brain,” says Doug Kelley, Bloomsday’s first race director. “We were hanging onto the tail and it was taking us for a ride.”
It had just begun.
After the 1980 race, The Spokane Chronicle started running every finisher’s name and time. Race promoters encouraged the walkers, the elderly and the handicapped to participate too. A computerized multi-chute system allowed hundreds to finish at the same time.
Almost 38,000 people ran the 1986 race. By 1987, the turnout topped 50,000. In the 1990s, the race has attracted almost 60,000 people a year.
Sylvia Quinn, race director from 1983 to 1991, saw the explosion up close.
For years, Bloomsday had trouble finding corporate sponsors, she says. Now there’s a long waiting line to be one of the 18 businesses paying $5,000 to use Bloomsday logos in their advertisements.
With the expanding throngs came the need for thousands of volunteers to distribute water and T-shirts, to compute finishing times, to ensure a smooth event.
“The volunteers make that race,” Quinn says. “Without them it couldn’t happen.”
During its two decades, Bloomsday’s personality changed from road race to social event.
The average finishing time has climbed from one hour to two hours, from eight-minute miles to 16-minute miles. The typical Bloomie went from a running man to a walking woman.
It’s become such a signature event, Bloomsday now would be hard to screw up, many say.
Kardong laughs. “Oh no. It’s very easy to screw it up. Just because you get it right one year doesn’t make a bit of difference for the next.”
In fact, Kardong admits some fears about this year’s run. Computer wizards are still scrambling to overhaul the new equipment to calculate the finishers.
Glancing ahead, Kardong foresees a day when every runner and walker carries a computer chip so that the times are more precise and cheaters can’t fool the computers.
Kardong doesn’t see the run getting much bigger. But if it does, he smiles, “we might have to look to run it on the freeway.”
Meanwhile, Bloomsday continues to be seemingly blessed. For years it never rained. It only snowed once, and even then mostly melted by race time. The course has been run by 683,344 people. Only two have died, both from heart attacks. One man collapsed just as he crossed the finish line.
For Lynch, MSC’s point man in helping launch the race, Bloomsday is a success story because it kept to its mission, to emphasize participation rather than competition.
“At its heart and soul it’s a community event,” he says. “It’s a world class road race too. But it’s never forgotten what it’s really about.”
Its bottom-line charm, Lynch says, is that it makes people happy.
“You look at the people finishing, and they’ve got the the biggest smiles on their faces….They come through at the two-hour mark with their hands in the air.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Bloomsday registration