SPOKANE, Wash. – The 50th Bloomsday race welcomes back the Perennials, bloomies who walked, ran, or jogged all 50.
“It’s just really something to look forward to,” Perennial Martin Kittredge said. “And it’s kind of like a camaraderie among us Perennials that look forward to see them every year, the ones that still survive! So yeah, I just keep going as long as I can. Yeah.”
“One of the more memorable things in my life, really,” Jack Charbonneau said. “It’s just a lot of fun. Every year, it just became more and more special, I think, over the years. I always told myself from the very first year that I was going to do it until I was 90, so that’s still my goal.”
Kittregde and Charbonneau finished right next to each other in last season’s Bloomsday, and the pair kept up races with training and determination for years.
“I was born and raised in Spokane, but my job took me to Oregon for 25 years,” Charbonneau said. “But I just always made the effort to make it back here. I just wanted to always keep my record straight.”
Kittredge added what got him into the race back in his 20s.
“But then I saw this race come up. I thought, well, why not try it?” Kittridge said. “It took me a while to work up to the eight miles for the first year. And then I got hooked. A lot of people I know got hooked on the first one. So you just got to keep going.”
Both racers told us they plan to return for years to come, Charbonneau noting his biggest goal is to race until he’s 90, so 12 more years.
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