Fifty years of community running · one very difficult interruption
Running the race was only part of running the race.
Chico Running Club is part athletic history and part institutional continuity: races, volunteers, timing, course work, breakfast, media, music and the ordinary board work required to keep a long-lived community organization alive after disruption.
A 5K looks beautifully simple from the start line. Less so from the folding-table side of it.
Continuity is an achievement.
The Chico Running Club had already served the community for roughly half a century when COVID broke the ordinary rhythm of events, membership, volunteering, and board succession.
After COVID, participation and race entries fell, and the Board moved toward ending races and folding the club. Krista and I opposed that outcome and did the work that kept the organization alive. Tracie served on the Board too, but the effort that prevented dissolution fell to Krista and me. We have since transitioned off the Board, and the club is active, growing, and once again full of life.
IRS filings corroborate officer and Board roles, but they do not record the internal deliberation about folding the club. That account is firsthand and should be paired with minutes, email, and race records as the archive is completed.
The win belongs to the institution.
Preserving an established organization is less dramatic than launching a new one, but the community keeps the accumulated history, relationships, events, and identity. That is the result that matters.
Running connected several lives.
The club sat at the intersection of my own competitive history, community running, coaching, events, Special Olympics, family activity, and the practical work of nonprofit continuity.
Independence Day in Bidwell Park
The starting gun was the easy part.
For years, Chico Running Club’s Fourth of July 5K meant an early race in Bidwell Park, the Chico Community Band playing patriotic music, Capt. Bob’s Pancake Wagon feeding the crowd, and a lot of volunteers making separate pieces feel like one community morning.
We ran the race. I coordinated the band. The rest was timing, registration, course work, media, breakfast, cleanup, and whatever had been forgotten before sunrise. It was one of those long-running Chico jobs that only looks effortless after enough people do the work.
The club’s own archives preserve Independence Day and July 4 race results across many years, while Chico Area Recreation & Park District records the Community Band’s continuing role in Fourth of July celebrations.
Community running
Race morning and the rest of the miles.
At One Mile on July 4, the race, music, breakfast, and families overlapped. In Upper Bidwell Park, the work was an aid station, supplies, and the next runner coming around the bend.
