9/5/2026

Early American Days 5K

Killbuck, Ohio

Lori Fritz

Finish Time:  N/A

Overall Place:  N/A

Division Place:  N/A

Race Recap By Lori Fritz:

You know you’re in Holmes County when you are sharing the trail with horses, and you know you’re in Killbuck when you see all kinds of signs about high water.
This morning I ran the Killbuck Early American Days 5k, and from the onset it seemed organized well enough. Their chip timer was a no-show because they double booked, so the organizers did the race old school. No bibs, and they handed out pieces of paper with a number on it when you crossed the finish line.
No worries there, it is always good to have a backup plan, and fortunately it was a very small race.
Where it started falling apart; they did not communicate any of this at the start of the race. So many people did not know what to do with the piece of paper. There were no overall awards. Age groups were decades and only went up to 60. And I know there were at least a couple of 70-ish year olds there. And there were some people missed. The lady who came in first overall should have at least won her age group and her name was never called. They had to backpedal a couple of times on a couple of the age groups to try and give the correct placement award. And due to a miscalculation, they ran out of first place medals. The nice thing is, the youngest kids got their medals. Us adults may not be overly happy about the situation, but it’s just one race, it was for a good cause and we’ll get over it. We’re not qualifying for the Olympics here.
It is not easy to be a race director. There is always something that goes wonky. You just hope that if something does go wonky that you’re the only one to notice, and all the participants go home happy with plans to run your race again next year.