Bloomsday, it’s a race that all Spokane natives have heard about, but have you ever wondered how it came to be?
The first Bloomsday race took place on May 1, 1977. But the race had been in the making long before that.
At 27 years old, Don Kardong was the man with the plan for this race. He had been competing in other small-town races, like the Peachtree Road Race in Georgia, and he decided that Spokane needed one too. He said he never expected how big it would get.
What started off as a suggestion from an Olympic runner grew to something people from all over travel here to compete in.
Kardong came up with the idea for the race in the fall of 1976 but they didn’t start organizing it until early in 1977.
“We put it together in only three or four months,” Kardong said. The Bloomsday organization realized then that they needed more time for how big it was growing, it is now a year long process.
Kardong thought it would be as big as the Peachtree Road Race, which had about 2,000 runners at the time. However, it was a lot bigger than anyone expected. For the first 10 years, Bloomsday grew by about 5,000 people per year. \
“It was way, way beyond what any of us involved could’ve anticipated at the beginning,” Kardong said.
Both the male and female overall winners of the race are award $7,000 each., The top 15 people also get prize money.
Everyone competing in the 12-kilometer race receives a unique Bloomsday T-shirt. As the design is kept a secret every year, no one knows for sure what is in store this time around.
Kardong and 82 others have run every single race, adding up to 42 races. They are called the Perennials.
There is also a run for the younger population of Spokane called Jr Bloomsday, which took place April 20. This was not the idea of anyone in the Bloomsday office. It was just something schools did around Spokane. This year is the first year Bloomsday has taken it under their wing and now as an actual Bloomsday event.
After this year’s race, Kardong will be stepping down from his role as director and handing the reins to Jon Neill.
Neill has been with Bloomsday since he graduated law school, and before that he was an intern for Kardong when he was an undergrad at Gonzaga University.

“He has been president of the board of directors,” Kardong said. “He has been a major part of almost every part of Bloomsday so he is the perfect person to take over.”
Don Kardong recently sat down and answered some questions that we had about him and Bloomsday which is this year on May 5.

1. What made you become a runner?
I started running in high school, I had done a little track and field before then, but basketball was my main sport. The coach one day came to me and said, ‘what are you doing to stay in shape for basketball?’ I asked what I should be doing, and he said I should turn out for cross country. That sounded like a fine idea, so I turned out for cross country my sophomore year and found out I could run distance pretty well.
2. Where was your first big race?
Well I ran races in the fall of 1964 (sophomore year) and I kind of didn’t know what I was doing but by the end of that season when we had our conference meet I won that, it was the first big meet I won, it was in Seattle. Before that I had run races but that was the first big meet I had even won.
3. How do you feel about how big Bloomsday has gotten?
Oh, I think it’s fabulous. It is probably the most surprising thing that has happened in my life, I think watching all those people come down to the start every year and watching them finish is the most gratifying thing. Before we started Bloomsday, there was nothing like that in Spokane and at that time there was really nothing like it in the world, so it’s been very gratifying to see all those people show up.
4. Who came up with the idea for the running statues by artist David Govedare?
I used to see him (the artist) at the YMCA, which at the time was at Riverfront Park pretty close to where the statues are located. I was coming back from a run and he watched me come in and he said it was interesting watching the flow of someone running. He said he would like to do a sculpture like that for Bloomsday and I said well if you want to do a statue like that it has to be more than one person. So, I made that much of a suggestion, but he took it from there and made it work. It wasn’t my idea, but I was there when he came up with the idea for the statues.
5. Did you have any input for making the ice cream dedicated to you at Sweet Peaks?
Some of our organization team wanted me to have an ice cream, so we went down to Sweet Peaks and talked about different options. They asked what I’d like it to be and I said I would love to have a huckleberry ice cream with chocolate in it and they took it from there. So yeah those are the flavors that I picked out.