Looking back while we move forward
April 25, 2009 by Jon
It’s pretty amazing to look back and see how far the Run of the Mill 5k has come in the last few years.
In 2006, the Snohomish County Chamber of Commerce decided to stop organizing the Run of the Mill. Steve Knox, not wanting to see the run go away, stepped up as the lead organizer of the event. Steve heard from his son that I had planned a couple road races over in Tri-Cities, WA. He asked me to help plan the event, and I happily accepted.
2006 was a whirlwind of an event. With only a couple short months to plan the event, the new team managed to get 450 people to show up and raised about $8,500 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. From the beginning, we decided to change a lot of things from previous runs, including the location and distance (before 2006, the Run of the Mill was a 5.5k. Now it is simply a 5k). We also decided to change the event to a charity event – donating proceeds to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Better yet, we restructured the budget to make it possible to donate 100% of race entry fees to charity. Since 2006, we have donated 100% of our race entry fees to charity.
I recently found the montage I made after the 2006 event. It still brings tears to my eyes knowing we were able to do so much in so little time while helping people and bringing together the community.
