Sometimes the small, local races surprise you. When my friend asked me to run the Old Fashioned Festival 5K with her in a neighboring town for $10 I had no problem jumping in. It was her first ever race and there would be pancakes afterward. Who wouldn’t!? I didn’t expect much of the race I’d not even heard about or seen listed on anywhere, but it was a great time.
Old Fashioned Festival 5K
First of all, the Newberg Old Fashioned Festival has been going on for 37 years. It features a carnival, parade, bands playing old-timey music, antique car show, dog show, fireworks, and on and on. A lot for a small town event put on by parks and rec.
So apparently the untimed, local fundraiser 5k has been running longer than the festival, but no one is sure how long, so they decided to just call it the 38th annual. Ha. Registration was only on site morning-of and opened at 6AM.
They did have race-specific bibs and used the tear tag to track finishing order. So legibly writing your name, age and contact info on the tag actually mattered. Mistakes on this simple task led to some amusement later.
The race started at 8AM on the southwest corner of Memorial Park. We headed west on 5th Street and then turned south on Dayton avenue for an out-and-back that was hillier than I would’ve thought, but certainly runnable. It wasn’t particular scenic but there were lots of trees along the road. It was already warm as we’ve been having a hell of a summer heat wave.
InkNBurn Pirate Pants were the most Old Fashioned like thing I had.
#FamilyGoals
Favorite thing about this 5k? There were lots of families participating together. Some young kids running alongside their mom or dad or grandpa. Others, we’d find out later during the age group awards (ribbons), were just families with multiple generations of runners who all came to run their own race.
My friend and I kept to a walk/run interval and I cheered everyone on as they passed us heading back toward the start. I won’t lie. I get jazzed when I cheer on other runners and see them smile or do “the nod” or just be shocked someone was clapping for them or offering a high-five. My friend said I’m the best person to run with because I’m so encouraging. I’ll take it!
Raffle Prize & Award Hilarity
The second best thing about this little 5k was the cool and funky little raffle prizes which ranged from a free massage, wine, free wine tasting coupons to John Deere hats, football socks and a bottle of bubbles (which I won). Everyone runner got a raffle ticket and enjoyed hanging out to see who got what.
With the local high school “Court”? I guess from like homecoming or something?
The age group awards were also pretty fun as nearly everyone knows someone who wins. One of my friends (I won’t say which) won first place for the 50-59 age group because she didn’t write her true age on her tear tag legibly enough, apparently. So yeah, we teased her about it. She didn’t take the ribbon though.
Enjoying the Festival
Honestly we didn’t stay for the main attractions of the day, but…the pancake breakfast? Hells yeah. Sausage, egg, blueberry pancakes, coffee, orange juice…all you can eat for $7. We stayed. We stayed awhile.
We did get to hear the first band of the day play and see a few of the craft vendors who had opened their booths early.
Would I run it again?
For $10? Heck yeah. We plan on coming back next year to sweep our TRUE age group (30 to 39) and get us some ribbons and maybe a John Deere hat.
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