Bloomsday Perennial: Vermonter has the longest to travel to keep streak alive, but the rush makes it worth the flights

NEWPORT, N.H. – Bob Felton says he isn’t a serious runner, and at first glance, his showing at the inaugural Bloomsday seems to prove his case.

When the gun went off, Felton hadn’t raced in six years. He competed while wearing a bulky AM radio headset, tuned into to the live Bloomsday coverage. And he was shirtless and glistening with coconut oil, to work on his tan.

“I took it lighthearted,” he said.

But Felton’s argument that he doesn’t take running seriously starts to fall apart when you look at the full body of contradictory evidence.

First, there’s the fact that Felton wears a small fortune in running tech on his wrists and fingers: one Apple Watch, one Garmin GPS watch, two fitness tracking bracelets and a smart ring. The duplicative gear is an insurance policy – one or two tracking devices might fail during a run, he figures, but not five.

Second, there’s the fact that Felton, who now lives in northern Vermont, is hoping to join the 251 Club. To become a member, he’ll have to run a mile in every one of Vermont’s 252 towns. (No, that’s not a typo; the state has gained a town since the club was formed).

The third fact undercutting Felton’s claim? He’s a Perennial prepping for his 50th Bloomsday.

Felton, 70, grew up north of Spokane in Newport, where he set the high school’s mile and 2-mile records.

But while Felton enjoyed competing, he didn’t particularly like running. He found the training boring and didn’t run much from 1971 until the first Bloomsday in 1977.

At the time of the original Bloomsday, Felton was a 21-year-old draftsman for EZ Loader in Spokane, turning boat trailer designs into precise blueprints.

He saw advertisements for the race and figured it’d be fun to “run with the stars,” as the ads put it. He signed up on the last day possible, showing up at Bloomsday founder Don Kardong’s apartment an hour or two before the registration deadline.

Felton’s first Bloomsday didn’t go smoothly.

It was a hot day, and spectators atop Doomsday Hill used their garden hoses to soak passing runners.

The water was welcome, but it damaged some of the paper ID bibs runners pinned to their shirts.

Felton’s bib partially disintegrated and fell off sometime during his descent of Doomsday Hill. When he realized he’d lost it, he turned around and began retracing his steps in hopes of finding it.

Right before the bottom of Doomsday Hill, Felton flagged down a man on a motorcycle and asked for help.

The Good Samaritan biker drove up the hill to search while Felton turned around and resumed running. A few minutes later, the biker caught up to him and handed him a waterlogged bib.

After the race, Felton realized the bib wasn’t his. He went back to Doomsday Hill to look for it and found plenty of bibs, but not his own.

“There were dozens, if not hundreds on the hill,” he said.

Felton doesn’t remember his finishing time for the first Bloomsday.

“I don’t think it was fast,” he said.

He got faster over the next few years and set a personal best in 1984 when it snowed before the race and he finished in 50:54.

He gives himself rough goals when he races but generally doesn’t obsess about PRs as much as other runners.

“The goal is have fun, have a good time,” he said.

For his first 25 or so Bloomsdays, Felton only trained sporadically in the lead-up to the race.

Many long-distance runners train five or more times a week to build up their endurance. The idea of running a 12k without training beforehand would sound, to some, like torture.

Felton never minded it. If he gets tired during the race, he just takes a break.

“I gave myself permission to walk,” he said.

Felton hasn’t lived in Spokane since 2003. He’s spent the past 23 years in Oregon, New Hampshire and Vermont.

He isn’t much motivated by nostalgia to come back to Bloomsday; he’s motivated by two kinds of competitiveness.

First, as one of the youngest Perennials, he wants to win the slightly macabre, and literal, award that will go to the last living Perennial.

“Nobody wants to drop out,” Felton said.

Second, even though he doesn’t care much about PRs, Felton loves the one-on-one competition you can only find in a serious race.

His favorite Bloomsdays are the ones when he finds someone who really wants to race him. He lives for the informal races within the race, the side-by-side dashes right before the end.

“I like to race rather than run,” Felton said. “That’s what I like, the drag race right at the finish.”