Longtime runners reflect on a first Sunday in May without a Bloomsday

There’s an unofficial creed among Bloomsday’s perennials, a group with the rare distinction of entering Spokane’s popular road race every year since its 1977 inception.

It’s a lighthearted yet serious tack for the aging runners, many with fresher legs and stronger lungs than much younger participants.

“We’ll do Bloomsday until we die,” said Rich Landers, 67, one of the younger perennial Bloomsday runners who has witnessed the event grow into one of the region’s foremost outdoor sporting events.

But the coronavirus pandemic, like it’s done to nearly all major sporting events across the country, ultimately pushed Bloomsday to Sept. 20, the last Sunday of the summer.

Mortality was thought to the only thing that could stop 83-year-old Sylvia Quinn from racing on the first Sunday of May, a day reserved for an average of more than 40,000 runners and joggers in recent years.

“I’m still looking forward to it, since I’ve done them all 43,” Quinn said, “If I’m still living, anyway.”

When the sun rises – or the clouds hover – over downtown Spokane early Sunday morning, the original date of 44th annual Bloomsday race, Riverside Avenue won’t be flooded with runners getting set for their 7.45-mile journey.

The ultimate perennial – Bloomsday founder and former Olympian Don Kardong – won’t be flying by other men in their 70s, per usual, and more important, won’t be running the show, duties he handed to new president Jon Neill last spring.

Neill, a former Gonzaga cross country runner and Pullman native, has been in 20 Bloomsdays while ascending within the organization and practicing law at a private firm.

He stepped away from his legal career last year to focus solely on Bloomsday, and, in his first official year as president, fell into an unprecedented situation.

“When you have an event for 43 straight years – and then you don’t – it’s a real shock to people,” Neil said. “There’s some sorrow, some sadness and emptiness. It’s just bizarre when you’ve helped the race, been in race.

“It’s just a little unsettling, really, with it not happening on Sunday.”

But it’s not going to stop people from running.

Landers said he still planned to run the Bloomsday course in a “social distance Bloomsday” on Sunday, and will ready in September.

“I am going to get up and do something,” Landers said. “That’s one of the main things, you get off your butt and run. It just won’t be with all the fun and all the people like usual.”

Neill, who said he heard several runners still planned to run the Bloomsday course Sunday, discouraged any sizable gatherings downtown because “it’s not a good idea right now.”

Quinn, who said she will also be running for miles on Sunday in Spokane Valley, is carving out the positives in the Bloomsday postponement.

“Now it’s something to look forward to with everything that’s been canceled,” she said “And for those who train at the last minute, it’s not such bad news because they’ll have more time to prepare.

“It’s like Christmas, any way you look at it.”

Neill said he plans to run 12 miles on Sunday, given the time away from the Bloomsday whirlwind.

He’s seeing a lot more running these days.

“With all the quarantine going on, I don’t think I’ve seen this many people running around town, being active in our neighborhoods,” he said.

Wheelchair participant and Spokane resident Tyler Byers, who has been in 27 Bloomsday races, plans to still get a taste of the usual downtown action on Sunday – but virtually.

Byers who was regularly in the men’s elite top five in the early 2000s, will be working out on his chair from home as he watches the course with others on a Zoom workout. Another wheelchair athlete recorded his 2019 race with a Go Pro video so the group can relive it in quarantine.

“It’s going to be very different,” said Byers, who did his first Bloomsday at age 9. “You train and lead up to this time of year. The leaves are coming in, the sun is coming from a different angle, and the smells of spring and (Bloomsday are here), but it’s not happening on Sunday.

“It’s definitely going to be strange.”