Families, friends and pets dressed in holiday costumes will race around the John Nesbitt Loop Dec. 12 for the seventh annual Jingle Bell Run 5K.
The event has grown every year since the inaugural race in 2009 and this year organizers expect between 500 and 600 runners. The fastest finishers win prizes and the honor of cutting down and keeping the handmade holiday wreaths hanging from the finish line.
In keeping with the festive spirit of the race, there are also awards for best holiday costume, best group costume, best family costume, best pet costume and best-decorated stroller.
The elaborate nature of many runners’ costumes suggests very few are out to achieve personal records. Race organizer Madeline Flagler said the most frequent feedback she gets from participants year after year is they don’t want to miss this one because this is the fun run.
“And that’s nice,” she added. “That’s what we’d like to be known as.”
Participants get especially creative with the group costumes, she said. Last year, a team from Noble Middle School that participates every year won the group costume category by dressing up as 16 Elves on Shelves.
Historic aspects are also incorporated into the holiday event, because it serves as a fundraiser for the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History. The course takes runners past some of the town’s oldest homes and one of the costume awards is a nod to the island’s past.
In the 1930s and ’40s, the iconic Lumina Pavilion held beauty contests for babies. The mothers strove to give their babies an advantage by decorating the babies’ strollers with paper and garlands, so the Jingle Bell Run’s best-decorated stroller prize is a gentle allusion to that piece of history.
The race starts at 9 a.m. Saturday. To register visit www.Its-Go-Time.com
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