Volunteers help registrants on Friday afternoon for the Woodstock 5k at Wig's Wheels. Organizers said a record 1,500 runners had signed up for the race. Registration closes at 7 o'clock tonight at Anniston High School. (Photo by Trent Penny/The Anniston Star)
By noon today more than 1,500 had registered for the Anniston Runners Club’s premiere event, race director Dennis Dunn said. That’s 200 more people than the race’s previous participation record of some 1,300 runners in 2010.
“We always talk about, ‘wouldn’t it be nice to max things out,’” Dunn said Friday as he headed to pick up 80 extra racing bibs that organizers had shipped overnight in the face of record turnout.
The high registration levels also mean that some people who run the Woodstock 5K won’t receive commemorative shirts given to participants each year. Officials only ordered 1,500 shirts, and Dunn said all of those were gone by midday today.
He said he expected that would happen after counting up the number of people who had registered on the Internet. When online registration closed Thursday evening, 1,430 people had signed up for the 3.1-mile race.
People can still register for several more hours. The morning registration booth at Wig’s Wheels, at Noble and 13th streets, closes at 2 p.m. In-person registration continues at Anniston High School from 5 p.m. until 7.
“This is crazy,” Dunn said.
Staff writer Cameron Steele: 256-235-3562. On Twitter @CSteele_star.
