More than 900 people forming 160 different teams were out running the trails connecting six Park City schools Saturday morning. Three of the participants ran the entire 27.6 miles solo.
Park City Education Foundation Vice President of Advancement Jennifer Billow says donations will continue to trickle in over the next few weeks.
“All the fundraising pages are open,” Billow said. “There are 200 teachers running in the race, so that is a great way to directly support a teacher. Every $5 helps, $10 helps and more, and those pages will be up probably for at least two more weeks. You can just type in your teacher's name, or type in any name and see if they ran in the race and make a donation that'll help us reach that $325,000.”
Billow says the money will go back directly into the schools through classroom and express grants which are submitted by teachers.
“For instance,” she said, “the RC club, the Race and Engineering club, where they're building remote control cars, the kids are learning coding, design and engineering. It's for fifth graders. It is so much fun, and the kids are learning how to collaborate. Debate is one of our classroom grants. We've been supporting the debate team for years, and, you know, this year they were state champs. Latinos in Action is another classroom grant that we support.”
Carolee Polveri is a staff member at McPolin Elementary. She and her team dressed up as ostriches this year – winning the costume contest. Their costumes were made using black garbage bags, tutus and boas. Runners put a sock on one of their hands. When they bent over and raised the socked hand, as they did all over town, they looked just like ostriches.
“Actually, the person who decided this didn't even run with us, but we saw some YouTube videos on it, and we're like, ‘Oh, that is hysterical. We're going to do that.’”
As a long-time participant, Polveri says she’s run through all kinds of weather on race day.
“Almost every time I've gone it’s either rained or snowed,” she said. “There have been two years that were really nice, one of which, think two of which, I did not run. So, yeah, I don't mind the rain. The snow, that's a different story. But you know, the rain for running is actually pretty nice.”
Billow says the event isn’t about who is fastest, but there are plenty of other competitions including the $10,000 Vail Epic Promise grant that is given to the three schools that have the highest percentage participating in the race. This year there was a tie between Jeremy Ranch and Trailside elementary schools. Each school received $5,000 and $2,000 went to the third-place finisher Parley’s Park.
With the demolition of Treasure Mountain Middle School this year, Billow says this was the final Running with Ed relay exchange that will happen there.
