A Whole Lotta Bloomies

This Sunday, about 50,000 men, women, and children will crowd the streets of downtown Spokane for the 36th annual Bloomsday Run, a 12K event that attracts average Joes from all over the Northwest and Olympic-level runners from around the world.  For the elite runners, it offers top-notch competition.  For fit amateurs it’s a challenge to achieve a personal best.  Other Bloomies simply enjoy the happy stroll through the neighborhoods surrounding the Spokane River, the cheering crowds lining the streets, and the accomplishment of finishing an ever-popular 12K.

Bloomsday has many traditions, including Doomsday Hill, a vulture, a secretive finishers-only T-shirt, and plenty of music. But the most obvious tradition is the huge turnout.  Participation grew like crazy during the first ten years and has more or less stayed constant ever since.  It’s like an entire city in motion.  If last year’s Bloomsday finishers were their own city, they would be the 22nd largest in the state — larger than Kirkland or Richland.  The run draws more than twice the runners of any other race in the state and is consistently one of the three largest timed races anywhere in the United States.

A remarkable total of 1,638,028 official finishes have been logged over 40 years. That’s an average of 40,951 per race.  The largest crowd of Bloomies (56,156) ran the distance in 1996, the twentieth year; the smallest was in the inaugural race of 1977 which was won Olympic marathon gold medalist Frank Shorter.  Of the 1,198 original runners, 146 (12%) have gone on to finish every subsequent Bloomsday over the next 34 years (and 92 continued through the 40th running)!  Eleven of them — including race founder Don Kardong — ran the 2011 race in less than an hour.

This year’s run will certainly draw another huge crowd.  The real mystery: what color is the shirt?

NUMBER OF FINISHERS IN SPOKANE’S BLOOMSDAY RUN, 1977-2011 (Updated through 2016 in May, 2016)

*Roughly 50,000 finishers at the Peachtree Road Race (Atlanta, GA) and the Boulder Boulder (Boulder, CO).  The Bay to Breakers (San Francisco, CA) often attracts greater numbers of starters (and the same winners as Bloomsday!), but not as many finishers.

PHOTO & CHART © Steve Campion

SOURCE: Finishers totals derived from The Pacific Northwest Inlander “2011 Results Booklet.”  Additional information available at www.bloomsdayrun.org.  Participation numbers for comparable races according to runningusa.org and active.com.

SEE ALSO: Forty Years Running (the runners who ran the first 40 Bloomsdays)

May 5th, 2012