Determined Runner Finishes Bloomsday Minus One Shoe

Blackened and riddled with holes, the sock Jackie Edwards holds up is like an emaciated trophy. It is a striking reminder of a painful Bloomsday.

The north Spokane 11-year-old lost her right shoe at the starting line when another runner stepped on her heel. The Saucony jumped like a frog into the crowd and was gone.

Edwards, 11, took one look back, realized she would be trampled if she tried to recover the shoe, and ran.

“My heart just sank,” said Edwards, a Woodridge sixth-grader. “I said ‘oh, no, this can’t be true.’ But it was.”

She briefly considered quitting, but that’s not her style. She finished the race, her right heel covered with a walnut-sized blister, in 1 hour, 32 minutes.

“Jackie is just an extremely spunky little girl,” said her proud papa, Allyn. “When she gets her heart into something, nothing will stop her.”

“I had trained for this all year,” said Edwards. “I wasn’t going to stop, no matter what.”

She wisely protected her shoeless foot by running on the slick orange stripe of the road’s dividing line and on grass. A friend, 12-year-old Becca Harrison, and other runners encouraged her.

Every time her foot started aching - particularly in the last mile, Edwards blocked out the pain.

“When I was running, I wasn’t thinking about my foot,” said Edwards. “I was thinking about finishing.”

She trained by running four times a week. She averages about 8-minute miles and had planned to finish Bloomsday in less than an hour.

That time is saved for next year.

“I’ll keep my shoe on next year, hopefully,” said Edwards.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo