Bloomsday Perennial: She trained on a track, then got ‘hooked from the beginning’

Kris Olson-Wood has completed all 49 Bloomsday races, but one of her fondest Bloomsday memories didn’t happen on race day.

In the early years, Olson-Wood ran with a group of friends, and one of them would host a women’s breakfast the day before Bloomsday. That lasted for several years until the host moved away. But Olson-Wood remembers the year there was a special guest, Dr. Joan Ullyot. Ullyot, a physician and accomplished marathoner, was one of the running “stars” invited to participate in the first Bloomsday in 1977.

“It was one of the first few years,” Olson-Wood said. “One of our friends invited her and she came to the breakfast. I was so excited. She just kind of hung out with us.”

Olson-Wood, who was born in Kellogg and was a high school guidance counselor in Post Falls for 29 years, said she was not a runner when Bloomsday started.

“My brother had gotten into running,” she said. “He was the one who encouraged me to do Bloomsday.”

She trained for the first race, but on a track, not on the streets.

“I’d run so many laps, then I’d build on that,” she said.

She thoroughly enjoyed the first race.

“I just remember being excited about being able to do it,” she said. “I just got caught up by the people around me, and they carried me through.”

The experience helped her realize she liked running.

“I was hooked from the beginning,” she said. “It got me into shape. I think I liked the challenge.”

She would expand her running experience beyond Bloomsday, adding in marathons and half -marathons.

“After a few years, there started being other runs and other challenges,” she said. “It eventually evolved to be a part of my life.”

No matter what other races she entered, she made sure she was in Spokane for Bloomsday every year. She would often train with a friend who has done all but one Bloomsday.

“We would just train together,” she said. “That became what we did on the first Sunday in May.”

Olson-Wood said she’s been lucky enough to avoid injury, except for a stress fracture one year early in her running career that she attributes to poor quality shoes.

“I bought better shoes after that,” she said.

She works hard to stay fit, playing pickleball three days a week and running on Tubbs Hill near her Coeur d’Alene home four days a week.

“I try to do something every day, just to keep moving,” she said.

Olson-Wood, now 74, said her fastest time was 58 minutes.

“I did do it in under an hour one year,” she said. “That was many, many years ago.”

Olson-Wood calls herself slow and steady, but managed to finish the 2025 Bloomsday in a respectable 1 hour , 25 minutes, coming in sixth among the Perennials.

“All I worry about is finishing in some capacity,” she said. “I don’t worry about time like the old days.”

Olson-Wood is looking forward to the 50th Bloomsday in May but said she doesn’t plan for it to be her last.

“I want to keep going as long as I can,” she said. “I think we all just feel so lucky we can still do them.”