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| Rhododendrons on Roan Mountain |
Located in beautiful Bakersville, NC, The Rhododendron 10K is run in conjunction with the Annual NC Rhododendron Festival. This is our 4th time running this awesome race and today 120 runners showed up to participate in this fun small town event....
Bakersville has been the host for The Annual NC Rhododendron Festival since 1946. Included in the events are square dance lessons, beauty pageant, car show, street fair with arts, crafts, food and live entertainment, street dance, golf tournament, ducky derby, and the 10K run.
At an elevation of 2,460 feet, this small town with a population of 357 along with surrounding towns have joined together and have been able to keep this festival alive for 66 years. This year was the 35th running of the Rhododendron 10K, and this town can really put on a top notch race. Sponsored by Mitchell Co. Chamber of Commerce and managed by We Run Events, this chip timed course is USATF certified. Pre-registration was $15.00 prior to June 2nd after which was $20.00, T-shirts are provided to all pre-registered participants. The course is beautiful with the first mile making a loop through town and the rest of the course on an out and back section along the beautiful Cane Creek. The mile splits were called out at every mile and water was provided at mile markers 1through 5. After the race, we had a sit down breakfast with homemade pancakes, orange juice, water, bananas, fig newtons and Little Debbie snack cakes. And if that wasn't enough, there were cash prizes and awards for overall and age group winners. Here's how the cash awards were given...
Open Male/Female Masters Male/Female Grandmasters Male/Female
1st- $200.00 1st-$100.00 1st-$50.00
2nd-$150.00 2nd-$50.00
3rd-$100,00
4th-$50.00
Age group awards (a clear inscribed plate) are given in five year increments to the top three in each age division.
I don't know of any other race with such a low entry fee that provides so much to the runners. Thank you to Mitchell Co. Chamber of Commerce and particularly, Hank Brown and Terry Campbell of We Run Events for putting on such a high quality race.
After the race we took Shadow and headed over to the street festival to check out the activities. We had a great time until the muskets started going off during the civil war reenactment and scared the shiitake mushrooms out of Shadow! He took off as fast as he could heading back to Asheville via between Eve's legs who was bouncing around behind him holding on to the end of the leash! ...all this excitement was after Eve got bit by Shadow while she was trying to pull a chicken bone out of his mouth that he had found somewhere on the ground during our walk. He didn't intentionally mean to bite her, he thought he was still chewing on the chicken bone... yummy! After that we called it a day and headed home!
We plan on showing up again next year and hope to see you there!
For race results visit www.werunevents.com or www.carolinarunner.com
For information about Bakersville, NC and The NC Rhododendron Festival visit www.bakersville.com
and for some pictures, please see below...
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| Bart, Terry Campbell, and Eve at the 2009 race |
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| Rhododendrons on Roan Mountain |
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| Cane Creek |
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| Post race pancakes and OJ ...plus extra pancake for Shadow :-) |
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| Gouge School, awards ceremony |
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| Age group awards |
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| You know we had to check out street festival with the arts and crafts! |
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| Lots of people having a great time at the street festival! |
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