Bloomsday Perennials: Intense competition between brothers fades though not their desire to participate

Rick and Bob Barbero might have taken brotherly competition to unhealthy levels in their early years running Bloomsday. They did not just race on the first Sunday in May. They also competed to see who could do daily training runs in the months leading up to Bloomsday.

“My family hated January on,” said Rick Barbero. “We’d run every day and we had a bet and whoever missed had to buy a bottle of booze.”

His dedication was so great that he even squeezed in a run on the day his son was born.

“I had to go out and run at 10 at night just to keep the streak alive,” he said.

“Back then we were really competitive,” Bob Barbero said. “I had the early years and then he just pounded me and pounded me.”

“One year he went out real hard and I slipped around,” Rick said. “He didn’t see me. He thought he lost me. That’s how bad we were when we were competitive. Now we just jog together. We have nothing to prove.”

Both brothers were runners in at West Valley High School and ran for Spokane Falls Community College and Eastern Washington University. Rick moved to Eugene, Oregon, two weeks before the first Bloomsday in 1977, but it was his idea to run the race and he came back for it. At the time, his brother Bob was teaching in Davenport.

What they remember most about the first race was the heat.

“It was hot and people were going down,” Bob said.

“It was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” his brother said. “I just remember finishing the race and seeing Mike Keller and Len Long out floating in the river.”

“We weren’t sure if we should go out and rescue them,” Bob said.

Long was the cross country coach at North Central High School. Keller was a coach at the University of Idaho.

Both stuck with Bloomsday, partly because they liked seeing familiar faces every year. It was also a good excuse for Rick to come back to town to visit his brother. They developed a tradition of eating out at the Onion after the race, along with other runners.

As the brothers tell it, one year some of the waiters had squirt guns. Then somehow those squirt guns got into the hands of children, who started spraying people indiscriminately. Then, pitchers of water entered the fray.

“It turned into quite the show, water dripping from the ceiling,” Rick said. “It got pretty ugly after that.”

They no longer go to the Onion after the race.

Rick Barbareo was a traveling salesman for nearly a decade and now owns a wholesale distributor business. Since he was free to set his own schedule, he never had a problem getting to Spokane in time for Bloomsday. Bob Barbero continued teaching and coaching cross country for 24 years at University High School, nine years at Mt. Spokane High School and his final three years at West Valley. In all, he taught for 38 years and coached for 44.

Perhaps one of Bob’s most memorable races was when his two sons were in middle school.

“That was almost a disaster,” he said. “We started in the yellows in the back. I lost my youngest one somewhere in the middle of the race. I was running back and forth.”

As he searched frantically for his youngest son, Bob said he couldn’t help but think how mad his wife would be if he left with two children and only came back with one. He kept searching as he ran the rest of the race.

“I’m getting close to the finish and I was in a panic,” he said. “All the sudden he just popped up and said ‘Hi, dad.’ ”

“I did beat him that year, by the way,” Rick said.

Rick’s most memorable race was in the early 1980s when three-time Olympian Jim Ryun signed up for Bloomsday, whom Rick had idolized in high school and college.

“My goal was to stick with him as much as I could,” he said. “I did until the last 800 meters. He took off.”

The brothers used to have a bet that whoever lost Bloomsday had to buy dinner for the winner.

“I owe him a ton,” Bob said.

“We kind of lost track of who owes who how many,” his brother said.

Since then, though, the brothers have learned to take it easy.

“We tried to break 40 (minutes),” Rick said. “He did, I didn’t.”

“We went from breaking 40 to staying in the top 100,” Bob said. “The goals just kept changing year after year.”

“Now we’re trying to break an hour and a half,” Rick said. “We haven’t done that in a while.”

Bob said Bloomsday is a great way to check his fitness level.

“Once a year you check to see where you’re at physically,” he said. “It just gets us out exercising.”

They both love the camaraderie during the race and the opportunity to see familiar faces, particularly the other Perennials. Still, neither expected to still be doing Bloomsday 50 years later.

“That’s the longest thing I’ve done other than breathe,” Rick said.

Rick said he plans to keep doing Bloomsday “until they bury me.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself the first Sunday in May,” he said.

Bob, now 74, and his brother, who just turned 72, have slowed down in recent years. They no longer do daily training runs to prepare.

“I can’t get out there every day,” Rick said. “The body just won’t let me. I had a lot more fun 20 years ago. It’s a lot more of a challenge now.”

The brothers plan to do the 50th Bloomsday with several family members and probably will go out to lunch afterwards, just not at the Onion.

“It’ll be some sort of celebration,” Bob said.

Editor’s note: This article was changed on April 23, 2026, to correct information about the aftermath of the squirt gun fight at the Onion.