Bloomsday Perennial: Steve Moe is tattooed and ready for 50th race

There’s no doubt of Steve Moe’s love for Bloomsday. It’s tattooed on his calf.

Moe grew up in Kellogg and was working a health care job when the first Bloomsday was announced. He was decidedly not a runner.

“I was a 24-year-old fat guy,” he said. “I decided to try to get into shape.”

He and a couple friends played pickup basketball at the Spokane Club and decided they would sign up for the first race together. They would jog through Riverfront Park after their games to train.

When the race began at 1:30 p.m. that first year on an unseasonably warm Sunday in May, Moe struggled. It wasn’t only the heat that nearly did him in. “I thought I was going to die when I finished that first mile,” he said. “I ran in Hush Puppy duck shoes, which have no cushion whatsoever.”

He recalls that there was no traffic control on the race course the first year and someone drove their car on the course right into the thick of the runners. People were running around it and some even hopped up and went over the hood, he said, trapping the car in place.

“That first one was pretty interesting,” he said, noting that he has a personalized “Bloomie” license plate.

As miserable as that first race was, Moe was hooked. He went down to Runner’s Sole the next day and bought himself a proper pair of running shoes, which he compared to “running on a pillow.”

He started doing proper training runs and would soon begin running the Coeur d’Alene Marathon. “I ran quite a bit with an old friend of mine who has always been very upset that he missed the first Bloomsday,” he said. “We often ran it together.”

Moe estimates he did about 25 marathons and minor ultramarathons. He became so used to running longer distances that he would often run Bloomsday once, collect his T-shirt and then run it again. “One year I got really crazy and ran it three times,” he said.

Moe said he was mostly lucky enough to avoid injuries. He remembers one race, in either the second or third year, when a woman fell down across his calves right at the starting line. “I went down on my knees and bounced back up and finished the race,” he said.

It became a tradition that he would run with his children and then grandchildren. “It’s become a family thing,” he said.

He has cherished his finisher T-shirts, but admits he didn’t care for the 1978 shirt, which was a bright yellow with green lettering.

“I used that one to wax the car,” he said.

It was more than a decade ago that he got the first Bloomsday T-shirt logo tattooed on his calf. He said he has shown it off to other perennials.

“I keep telling all of the other perennials they should get one,” he said.

Moe has done Bloomsday virtually since 2020, doing loops around Seward Park in Seattle.

“My middle son, he walks with me every year,” he said.

Moe, now 81, said it’s important for him to complete the 50th Bloomsday in May.

“I hope this year I’ll be able to come to Spokane and do the actual course,” he said.

However, Moe isn’t sure if he’ll keep his perennial streak going after the 50th race.

“I think that will probably be enough for me,” he said. “It probably will depend more on my family than me.”