The Lilac Bloomsday Run, also known as Bloomsday, is an annual timed road race in Spokane, Washington, held on the first Sunday of every May since 1977. The course is 12 km (7.46 mi) long. The course starts in Downtown Spokane and heads northwest along the far west end of town, passes by Mukogowa Ft. Wright Institute and Spokane Falls Community College before heading up "Doomsday Hill" and back downtown to the Spokane County Courthouse. Every finisher of the race receives a Bloomsday t-shirt.
The Lilac Bloomsday Run has had over 40,000 participants every year since 1986. Race participation peaked in 1996 with 61,298 registered participants. The number of registrants in 2008 was 47,528. Lineth Chepkurui set an unofficial 12 km world record in the 2010 women's race.
Don Kardong, who founded the Bloomsday race, cites James Joyce's Ulysses as the inspiration for the name Bloomsday.
Read more about Lilac Bloomsday Run: Results
Famous quotes containing the words lilac and/or run:
“Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;”
—Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
“For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver—that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)