Bloomsday Perennial: Ted Kirpes moved away decades ago but comes back every year to ‘feel the vibes’

Ted Kirpes moved away from Spokane after completing the first two Bloomsday races, but he has made it a point to journey back on the first Sunday in May ever since. He even cut his honeymoon short to make sure he didn’t miss the race.

Kirpes grew up in the small town of Colton. He played basketball in high school and did a couple years on the track team “just for fun.” With a low number of students participating, he was tapped to run the 440 meters, 800 meters, 1-mile and 2-mile distances.

“I ran 6 miles from Colton to Uniontown and back when I was senior in high school just to see if I could,” he said.

He gave up running when he graduated, then came to Spokane to attend Spokane Community College. A friend invited him to run Bloomsday with him only a few days before the first race in 1977. Finding out that runner Frank Shorter, who won the gold medal at the 1972 Olympics in the marathon, planned to participate sealed the deal for Kirpes.

“It just sounded like fun,” he said.

The temperature was hot the first year, but Kirpes was unfazed. He said he used to work in a sawmill in Lewiston, Idaho, during the summers.

“I like the heat,” he said. “I wouldn’t complain about the heat.”

His friend, Greg Stout, also influenced his decision to run the second year.

“It was fun, and Greg was doing it again,” he said. “Some friends were going to come down to watch.”

The fact that those friends bought two cases of beer with them might have also offered Kirpes an incentive.

His streak of running Bloomsdays with his friend Greg would end after the third year, however.

“I beat him by 12 minutes that third year,” he said. “I say I crushed him and he didn’t come back.”

For many years, Kirpes would come to the race with his brother, Morrie.

“We never started together,” he said. “One year at the 6-mile mark, I look over and there’s my brother. We started running together.”

The moment of brotherly camaraderie didn’t last once the finish line was in sight.

“He took off when we turned the corner,” Kirpes said. “I caught up with him. I ended up beating him by 15 seconds.”

Once Bloomsday hit its 10th anniversary, Kirpes realized that organizers were keeping track of the people who had run every race. It solidified his desire to keep coming back.

“I always made sure I was coming over,” he said.

In 1987, Kirpes and his new bride went on their honeymoon to New Zealand, which conflicted with Bloomsday.

“We had to cut it short a couple of days,” he said. “We flew home Saturday night.”

He went home, dropped his luggage by the door, took a nap and rose in the early morning hours to drive to Spokane by race time.

Kirpes’ time as a “weekend warrior” hiking, climbing and playing softball would couple with his physically demanding HVAC job to damage to his body.

“You’re on your knees a lot, carrying heavy compressors,” he said.

One year he needed surgery to fuse his L3 vertebrae.

“I put off my first back surgery to run Bloomsday even though I was in quite a bit of pain,” he said.

Eight years later, he needed his L4 vertebrae fused, but was able to schedule it early enough so he could recover before Bloomsday. Then, in late 2017, he had three vertebrae in his neck fused. He has also had a meniscus tear in each knee that required surgery.

His feet have been an ongoing issue for as long as he has participated in Bloomsday. When he first started, he had shoes that were about a half size too small, which caused him to develop hammer toes.

“I had a couple bloody toes at the end of that one,” he said.

He bought new shoes, but decided on race day not to wear socks to give his toes as much room as possible. That was a mistake.

“I had nine bloody toes,” Kirpes said.

His next attempt was to buy shoes with a high toe box.

“That was an excellent feature,” he said. “Those shoes were pretty good.”

He would sometimes try wrapping his toes in moleskin, but it would always slip out of position. So he did something a little unorthodox.

“There were years I would wrap my toes with duct tape,” he said. “It worked.”

Through all the pain, Kirpes kept coming back. He wants to keep his streak going and also likes seeing his fellow Perennials every year.

“You can feel the vibes of it,” he said. “It was just so cool how it grew.”

In recent years, Kirpes has been staying at the Montvale Hotel each Bloomsday weekend. He’s always so certain that he’ll be back the next year that he makes a reservation for the following year before he leaves the hotel.

He also turns his annual pilgrimages back to Spokane from his home in Enumclaw into reunions of a sort. He typically has a barbecue with friends after the race, then heads to Colton for a couple days to meet up with high school classmates.

Kirpes logged his slowest time, just under an hour and forty minutes, in the 2025 race.

“I had an Achilles tendon tear last year,” he said. “It wasn’t worth hurting myself any worse.”

He’s looking forward to the 50th race in May and earning another finisher T-shirt that he will fold away carefully with the other 49.

“I don’t even put them on,” he said. “They’re in pristine shape.”

Now 68, Kirpes said he plans to keep doing Bloomsday as long as his health allows.

“I just love it,” he said. “I like the course, the people. I’m just going to keep going.”