Bloomsday Perennial: Phil Trautman makes trip from West Side to compete in annual race

Bloomsday Perennial Phil Trautman has lived on the West Side of Washington since 1979, but that hasn’t stopped him from making sure he’s in Spokane on the first Sunday in May every year. His career with various airlines means he’s just a short flight away, but there were a couple of close calls.

“I can fly standby anytime I want to,” he said. “That means I don’t have to drive.”

He would usually try to fly to Spokane a day or two before the race, but even then flying standby can be fickle. “There was a couple times when seats were really limited when I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” he said.

There was also the one year he had a return flight home only an hour after he was expecting to finish the race. He did the run, grabbed his T-shirt, and headed to the airport.

Trautman started running in high school and continued while attending Washington State University. “We ran every day,” he said.

In 1977 he started seeing flyers pinned to telephone poles that encouraged people to “Race with the Stars,” listing several world -class runners who were invited to participate in the first Bloomsday. Trautman signed up along with his friend, Dan Colby.

“I was fast enough that I had the leaders in sight for most of the race,” Trautman said. “It was cool to be that close to them.”

When the second race happened, Trautman was still living in Pullman and signed up again. His friend Colby, however, hurt his foot and couldn’t race. It was the only race Colby would miss.

Trautman recalls posting his fastest time of 47 minutes in 1983. “Those first few years I was running hard,” he said.

These days, however, Trautman said he’s just happy to make it up Doomsday Hill, though he still has some competitive spirit. “Now, because everyone is wearing Perennial shirts, you can find your people,” he said. “If you’re still a little alive in the last mile, you can try to pick somebody off. My brain still likes to think it’s a competitor.”

In the early years of Bloomsday, cars were not towed off the course and there were parked cars to contend with. Trautman recalls one year when he was running side-by-side with Colby that he had an encounter with a parked car as he veered to go around a slower runner. “I smashed my hand into the mirror ,” he said.

Other than that, however, Trautman has always finished the race without incident. “I always had my shoes tied well,” he said. “There were hot years and snow years. The weather was always somewhat different.”

Trautman worked in IT for Alaska Airlines for 20 years, then worked for Boeing for another 20 before retiring. He soon got bored, however, and now works for Southwest Airlines. He commutes to Dallas for work, spending four days a week there before flying home for the weekend.

Trautman said it has been important for him to participate in Bloomsday every year. “It didn’t even hit me until the 10th year,” he said. “Every decade was the launch point for the next 10 years.”

Most of Trautman’s massive collection of Bloomsday shirts is packed away because he moved so often. He currently lives in Lacey, Washington. “Those are all well preserved in a bin in storage,” he said. “I really like most of the designs they’ve made, very creative.”

Even in recent years when he could have done the race virtually, he made sure to be on the race course. He has run often with his friend Colby and his wife did a few races with him. His two children, however, never signed up. “My mom and I pushed my oldest in a stroller when he was 2,” he said.

He would also help push someone else through the course. When he was at Washington State University one of his bosses was professor Bernie Babbitt, a former high school sprinter who had begun running longer distances.

“Two hundred meters was a long way for him,” Trautman said. “He picked it up and just kept improving and improving. He was obsessed.”

Babbitt was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1980. There was one year, after Babbitt started using a wheelchair, that Trautman and others teamed up to push him through the Bloomsday course. “We pushed him and attached ropes to pull it through the course,” he said.

That was one year when Trautman didn’t care about his finishing time.

Though Trautman is in good health at age 73, he has slowed down. “I don’t run, really, but I’m really active,” he said.

He plans to “just get there and finish” the 50th race in May. Trautman said that he’s not sure how much longer he’ll keep making the effort to cross the state each May.

“I just don’t know if I would go to the trouble after 50,” he said. “I think a lot of people are going to retire after 50.”