Word is getting about.
While it is no surprise that people from the surrounding area will come to join in Friday’s Mad Bomber Run/Walk, the growing popularity of the race is going coastal.
Chanute and other nearby towns such as Yates Center and Fort Scott will provide the majority of out-of-town participants, but the communities of Topeka, Pittsburg, Overland Park, Coffeyville and Netawaka — just to name a few — also will be represented.
Proof of the night’s increasing draw is through its registrations for the 5k run and 3k walk. Participants are coming from Lincoln, Neb., Seattle, Wash. and Broken Arrow, Okla.
Some participants have family here and others used to live here, but either way they come back to join what is becoming an Allen County tradition.
Kaylan Gambill, from Broken Arrow, has family in town and while visiting Iola a couple of months ago she saw a flyer for the run.
“I thought it would be something fun to do,” to get out and exercise and get involved, Gambill said.
She and her father will be driving to Iola on Friday, prior to the race, because her father has a reunion to attend in town. At night the family will go to the fair and later she will run the 5K.
“I am in varsity basketball at my high school, so running is how I stay in shape,” she said.
Gambill, who will be a junior this year, has run a 5K before and thought it would be fun to do another one, she said.
Ever since the race’s popularity has grown, people have turned out to come from all over, and each year they have people from about eight or nine different states joining in, officer and Mad Bomber Run organizer, Mike Ford said.
“Usually people have family coming in,” Ford said. “We have a lot of families registering together.”
So far the official number of registrations Ford has received is 548, but “I haven’t entered all the numbers so we really have more,” he said.
Thrive Allen County’s Executive Director, David Toland, has said they are expecting to hit a 1,000 people, given the amount of people that registered the last days leading up to the run last year.
Ford agrees that goal seems on target. “We are ahead from where we were last year at this point,” Ford said.
