John Stroud / Post Independent
Construction will once again affect the running of the popular Strawberry Shortcut run Sunday morning on the final day of Strawberry Days in Glenwood Springs. This year, construction on the 27th Street bridge will affect the 10K portion of the Strawberry Shortcut, forcing runners to take a new path in the popular road race.
New race director Mike Kishimoto, who takes over for Kevin and Joy White after a decade in charge of the race, says that runners will race along the bike path toward Target in the Glenwood Meadows before plodding back down along Devereux Road along the Colorado River for the 10K portion of the race.
With Kishimoto taking charge of the 42nd running of the Strawberry Shortcut, the longtime Glenwood Springs resident and important member of the running community is looking for the race to mostly survive in his first season at the helm before he and assistant Abbey Ehlers begin to implement some changes to the long-standing road race through the heart of downtown Glenwood Springs.
“A lot of changes are already planned, and we’ve already started planning for next year,” Kishimoto said. “But we mostly just want to survive this year before we start making the changes we’d like to.””
Some of those changes could be made at the finish line, where Kishimoto hopes to have more of a community feel for runners to hang out long after the race is over and interact with community members.
“We want to really create a community event,” Kishimoto said. “We want people to hang around and talk with each other after the race, rather than running the race and then getting out of there. That would be great [to see runners hang around after the race and interact with each other.] Hopefully we can get that accomplished, whether its with food or beverages or entertainment down near the 7th Street underpass. We have a lot of ideas for the next few years that we’re excited to try and put together.”
Kishimoto added that he hopes to see the number of runners push toward 1,000 in the years ahead.
The 42nd shortcut supports Special Olympics Colorado. The cost of the races is between $30 and $50. For more information, please visit http://www.facebook.com/strawberryshortcut. The race starts at 7 a.m.
