Bloomsday Perennial: Pasco’s Shelley Carlson says ‘My mind still says I can run like I used to but my body says no’

Being pregnant didn’t stop Bloomsday Perennial Shelley Carlson from completing Bloomsday, but car trouble almost did.

Carlson, who lives in Pasco, was pregnant with her daughter for the 1990 race.

“I was a good seven and a half months pregnant,” she said.

She recalls needing to go to the bathroom part way through the race, so she and her husband stopped to get in line for the porta-potties. They waited and waited some more. Finally, Carlson threw up her hands, declared that it would be faster to just finish the race first and then got back on the course.

In 1992, her son was due in May. She did Bloomsday as usual that year, then gave birth on May 21. Carlson acknowledged that doing the race while that pregnant wasn’t easy. “You just do it,” she said. “I kind of go by that Nike swish: ‘Just do it.’ ”

While her first 20 Bloomsdays were relatively uneventful, Carlson nearly didn’t make the 21st. She and her husband, Rich Stephenson, were driving up from Pasco on race weekend when they started having car trouble and pulled over. Carlson said that though she was sad at the thought of ending her streak, she considered 20 to be a good run. At that point, however, the car started running again and the two were able to make it to Spokane in time for the race.

Carlson was attending college in Pullman when the first Bloomsday happened in 1977. “A group of us thought, ‘Hey, that might be fun,’ so we piled in a car together and away we went,” she said. “I was running a little bit at the time.”

Carlson had played basketball in high school and she and her six siblings all grew up working on the family farm near the Tri-Cities. “We were just country kids outside all the time,” she said.

After Bloomsday, Carlson started signing up for more fun runs.

“That’s what I did for entertainment,” she said. “I wasn’t a bar girl.”

She kept lacing up her sneakers every year and was on the Westinghouse Corporate Cup team for a while. “Then it got really competitive and I got booted out,” she said.

Many years her husband did the race with her, though he did miss a few because of his job as a soccer coach. “Sometimes he had to go coach soccer games that weekend,” she said.

When their kids were younger, her husband would sometimes sit out the race and spend the morning playing with them in Riverfront Park while Carlson completed the course. This year, Carlson hopes that her family, along with her children and 1-year-old grandson, will do the race with her.

“I’m kind of hoping to make it a family affair this year,” she said.

Carlson said she loves the atmosphere of Bloomsday, including the bands along the way.

A few of her coveted finisher T-shirts have gone missing over the years.

“The kids got in them and played with them years ago,” she said.

“I remember seeing my daughter’s friend wearing my first-year shirt. I never saw it again.”

Like other Perennials, Carlson isn’t as fast as she used to be. Last year, she finished the race in two hours , 14 minutes and hopes to beat that this year.

“The last several years I’ve been walking it with my husband,” she said. “I’m going to try going a little bit faster this year. I still have a little bit of a competitive spirit in me.”

She has another goal for this year’s race as well.

“I do enjoy Doomsday Hill, even though it’s a workout,” she said. “My goal is actually to run up the whole thing. I’ve done that before.”

Carlson said she’s been lucky enough not to have had to deal with many injuries. She’s broken her wrist twice, once playing soccer and once while trying to learn to snowboard.

“It’s been really good,” she said. “I just don’t have the enthusiasm to pound the pavement like I used to. My mind still says I can run like I used to, but my body says ‘no.’ ”

She keeps active by swimming, which is easier on her body. The couple’s dogs also force her to keep active.

“We walk every day,” she said. “We have two Labs and we don’t have a fenced yard.”

These days, the couple turns Bloomsday into a leisurely weekend. They usually stay at the Davenport Grand Hotel and it has been a longtime tradition to have dinner at the Spaghetti Factory the night before. They usually stop for lunch at the Onion downtown after the race before hitting the road to go home.

“We just enjoy Spokane for the weekend,” she said.

Carlson, 73, is proud to be one of the few women left among the Bloomsday Perennials.

“There’s only a handful of us ladies left,” she said.

Carlson said she never expected to be tallying her 50th Bloomsday.

“No, never,” she said. “You just keep doing it and doing it and then, all the sudden, you’re old. To have been a part of it for this long has been a privilege.”

Despite her age, Carlson plans to keep going as long as she can.

“We’ll do it again and again and again,” she said.