The Great Sedro-Woolley Footrace (and yes, there is a hyphen in there… it’s legit, I promise!) is held every year on the 4th of July in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. It is a small town and this race is part of a festival called “Logger-Rodeo.” The race features a 5.17 mile race and a 2 mile fun run/walk. I chose to do the 2 mile fun run as a practice race for the Army Physical Fitness Test that I would be taking a couple weeks later. The race is only $25.00, regardless of what distance you run. This is the bare bones cost… if you want a t shirt, it will cost you another $10.00. I opted to forgo the shirt (I have plenty already!) and thing that the race is quite a steal.
The packet pickup takes place the day of the race, in the parking lot of the local high school. Check in started at 07:30, and the volunteers made this a very smooth process. It is a relatively small race, so that is helpful.
The race course is not the most scenic, with the majority of the race taking place through the downtown area of the tiny town. However, if you run the 5.17 distance, the course will take you down by the river, which is a little more scenic. The best part of this race is how extremely FLAT it is. If you want a PR for these two random distances, THIS is the place to do it.
The race starts in the later part of the morning (09:30), so the weather was a little warmer than I would have preferred. However, it was still a quick, low-stress race.
My biggest complaint or concern about the race is the way that they time the race. There is not a timing mat. There is a person at the finish line collecting your chips and then running them back to the computer station to calculate your place and time. I ran hard through the finish line, but slowly handed my chip to the woman collecting them. Had I known that my “place in line” would be my place and final time, I would have continued running to the woman collecting the chips. I ended up missing the opportunity to place in my age group by 2 seconds! BUT, my husband ended up getting first place in his age ground, so I call this whole a thing a success!