The 42nd annual Firecracker Fast 5K is scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday in Little Rock as a Fourth of July tradition for central Arkansas runners that began in 1977.
Gary Smith directed the Firecracker's first 35 runnings and oversaw many of its major changes, most notably from a 7-mile distance with a start and finish in Little Rock's Heights neighborhood, to 4-mile loops in west Little Rock and later in Maumelle, and finally to its current downhill point-to-point course he designed and introduced in 1988.
Firecracker Fast 5K at a glance
WHEN 7:30 a.m. Wednesday
WHERE Race starts at the intersection of University and Kavanaugh and ends between War Memorial Stadium and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
REGISTRATION $30 on race day
DEFENDING CHAMPIONS Clint Bell, male; Cheryl Nolan, female
About 60 registered for the first Firecracker, but its move to the current course has drawn fields of 1,000 or more, with a high of 1,666 finishers in 2014, a year after Sean and Noelle Coughlan bought Smith's running shoe store and assumed responsibility for the race.
Last year, there were 1,592 finishers, the second most under the Coughlans' guidance. How many runners can the event attract?
"It's hard to tell," Noelle Coughlan said. "I do know that if we get more than 1,700, we'll run out of watermelon."
She said they have determined that 55 watermelons, combined with an assortment of other fresh fruits, are adequate for the largest crowd the race has to this point hosted.
"I think it would be kind of cool if we could one day strive to have 3,000 people do the race," Sean Coughlan said. "But that might entail bigger sponsorships, maybe bringing in some big names to increase enthusiasm, but that could go either way. You could spend all the money on runners and paying for them, and then you end up with seven or eight hundred entrants."
The current Firecracker course descends from Little Rock's Heights neighborhood on Kavanaugh Boulevard and Van Buren Street to its finish between War Memorial Stadium and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences campus near Markham Street.
Landmarks along the route begin with the Heights business district, highlighted by restaurants, bars and businesses reminiscent of downtowns once typical of American smalltowns. They begin again through Hillcrest, where runners race past Mount St. Mary Academy and finish as the course turns past War Memorial Golf Course and the Little Rock Zoo.
Among the Coughlans' first moves was to hire Start2Finish Events Management, based in Memphis, to handle the challenges of registration, race direction and results dissemination.
As crowds of runners gathered to register at the Coughlans' west Little Rock store, Fleet Feet Sports Easy Runner, Noelle Coughlan praised the relative ease offered by Start2Finish's workers and equipment.
"It's really taken the pressure off," she said. "These are very busy days for us."
"There are lots of people who come into the stores during these days," Sean Coughlan said. "But it's just fun. It's just fun when it's busy."
Sean Coughlan said he cannot predict the size of race-day crowds.
"The biggest one we've ever had was a Friday morning race," he said. "But I thought Wednesday would've been bigger because maybe people weren't going away before or after the Fourth. I thought we might've come close to breaking the record, but now it doesn't look like it, so that might blow my theory out of order."
Sports on 07/03/2018