Bloomsday Perennial: Keith Lalonde likes to run fast, but savors the experience

Keith Lalonde, who was 12 when he ran the first Bloomsday in 1977, is the second youngest participant who has done all 49 races and is lacing up his running shoes for the 50th Bloomsday this weekend.

He credits his mother for his Perennial status because she’s the one who drove him to Spokane twice every year from Colville, once to get a registration packet and once to do the race.

“She’s the one I owe my streak to,” he said. “We had to drive to Spokane, go to the grocery store, find an entry packet, take it home, mail it in.”

The family lived in Spokane during the first race, but moved to Colville the summer after the race. LaLonde said he started running because his oldest brother was a track and cross country runner at Ferris High School. “I wanted to follow in his footsteps,” he said. “I wanted to be a runner.”

But first he had to persuade his mother to let him run Bloomsday that first year. She thought it was too far, Lalonde said. So his oldest brother did some training runs with him and convinced their mother that Lalonde could go the distance.

“We convinced her I would be fine and I absolutely was fine,” he said. “I ran the whole thing. I fell in love with the race.”

Lalonde found the race a challenge.

He isn’t sure how long it took him to run the first race, perhaps around an hour and 13 minutes.

“I believe that is my slowest,” he said.

When the family moved to Colville, Lalonde wanted to join the cross country team.

“Running was so much my jam,” he said. “I went to junior high and was crushed there was no cross country team. I went to the high school coach and asked if I could start one and run with the high school team.”

The coach took him up on his offer and Lalonde is proud that the cross country team he started is still going strong.

Bloomsday soon turned into a family affair. His mother, who is 90, walked the race for many years. Lalonde has two older and one younger brothers who have also done the race off and on over the years. In later years his two daughters have done Bloomsday almost every year. “It’s turned into a family thing over the years,” he said.

When his daughters were younger, he would run the race once for time, then restart the race and catch up to his daughters so they could finish together. Each time he did that, however, he was careful to conceal his finisher T-shirt. “I didn’t want to be the one to give that away,” he said.

Lalonde, now 61, is still a runner and also a middle school cross country coach. He co-leads the Sky Valley Runners group in Monroe, Washington, where he has lived since the late 1980s. He has done all seven marathon majors, races in Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York and Sydney.

Lalonde said it took him a while to sign up for his first marathon.

“I waited a long time to run a marathon,” he said. “My first marathon was actually an Ironman. I even got a little crazy and have done a couple ultra marathons.”

His best ultra marathon finish was sixth place in the 2023 Yeti 100. Lalonde said it’s all in the training.

“I have been running every day for 3,100 straight days, averaging close to but not quite 6 miles a day,” he said. “I have run on sprained ankles before. I’ve run when I’m not feeling my best.”

He identifies the 1994 Bloomsday as one of his favorite races. His speedy finishing times earned him a white race bib and a spot near the front of the pack that year. “I always wanted to be near the front,” he said.

He recalls running his first mile in five minutes and five seconds that year and was pleased that he could still see the race leaders. “I swear you could just see the world -class athletes up there,” he said. “Then I read in the paper that it was the slowest first mile in history.”

Last year he took first among the Perennials with a time of 51 minutes and 39 seconds, about 11 minutes faster than the Perennial in second place.

“Of course, age is helping me,” Lalonde said. “I have been at the top of the Perennial board for a number of years now.”

While he’s pleased with his recent Bloomsday finishing times, he said he doesn’t focus on time as much as he used to.

“I like doing good, but it’s not about the time anymore, it’s about the experience.”

These days Lalonde has a Bloomsday weekend routine. He usually arrives into town on Thursday so he has time to spend with his mother and other family members. He and his family have a pasta dinner Saturday night before the race, then some of them run Bloomsday together. On Monday morning, as he leaves town, he gets breakfast at Molly’s Restaurant.

He also has a routine when it comes to his finisher T-shirts. He wears each one once, the day after the race, then packs them away. “They don’t see daylight,” he said.

However, it wasn’t always that way. Lalonde remembers wearing his 1977 finisher T-shirt, which he still has, often as a teenager. “Who knew it was going to be a collector’s item?” he said.

It’s fair to say that Lalonde will be in many Bloomsdays to come. He said he still loves the race in part because he gets to see friends and be a part of history.

“It’s my favorite race,” he said.