COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: Chuckanut Foot Race is a family affair

| JOSIE LIMING THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

• ENTRY DEADLINE IS THURSDAY The deadline is 7 p.m. on Thursday to enter the Chuckanut Foot Race, which is capped at 1,000 entrants.
  
  The seven-mile race starts at 9 a.m. Saturday at Fairhaven’s Marine Park and ends in Larrabee State Park.
  
  The entry fee is $15. Race registration and more information is available at www.FairhavenRunners.com or at Fairhaven Runners and Walkers, 1209 11th St., Bellingham.
  
  

“That’s what happens when you’re helping to run the race,” said Genevie, who married into co-sponsor Fairhaven Runners and Walkers when she tied the knot with store owner Steve Roguski six years ago. “You usually don’t get to run.”

Father and daughter have collected a large tableful of memorabilia about the historic seven-mile race, which is presented by the Greater Bellingham Running Club. The race — complete with old-fashioned spelling — is ancient by distance running standards.

For this family, the Chuckanut Foot Race, which officially began in 1968 following an informal event the year before, couldn’t be more special.

“If people can run only one race during the year, they look forward to the Chuckanut,” Genevie said.

The race has had several different distances and starting points. It now starts at Fairhaven’s Marine Park and finishes at Larrabee State Park, covering the well-loved Interurban Trail.

The race is now capped at 1,000 entrants. It had already grown huge by 1995 — 27 years after the event began with 78 entrants and 68 finishers over a 5.2-mile course in 1968, and 17 years after Gale and Genevie first ran the race together in 1978.

Genevie, a 1984 graduate of Sehome High School, won a state Class 3A two-mile title and a state cross country championship, but she was just getting warmed up for Western Washington University. She won All-America honors six times in two sports and once finished as high as third in the nation in the 5,000 meters in Western’s class.

She was destined, in 1999, to be honored as Western’s “Female Runner of the Century.”

“In those days, there was only one century to consider,” she said with a grin.

Until 1995, she had never won a Chuckanut Foot Race, having treated her family to several exciting near-misses. Yet in 1995, “when she had moved past me as a runner,” recalls Gale, she knew she had a chance. With her father pushing himself to stay just behind her the whole way, she achieved a dream she had held close to her heart since first running the race at age 12 in 1978.

Genevie won the 1995 women’s division in 43 minutes and two seconds, one second ahead of her father, who finished a creditable 40th in the men’s race when he was 52.

Genevie, though, doesn’t like to refer to finishes like 40th or even second when she talks about her dad. He’s a humble but competitive sort who is always a bit taken aback by his daughter’s enthusiasm for his accomplishments.

“Dad has almost always won his Chuckanut master’s division in the last 10 years,” said Genevie, who formerly worked as a certified therapeutic recreation specialist at St. Joseph Hospital.

Gale has won several national master’s age-group championships in different distance events, capping his career with a third place in world steeplechase competition about five years ago.

“I was a hurdler at Bellingham High School and at Western,” said Gale, who owned Automotive Parts Service before the 83-year-old business closed a couple of years ago. “And, when I got older, Genevie ‘trained me up’ (as a distance runner). She got me in better shape than I had ever been.”

He loved track and field in high school and college, and was good enough to qualify for the then-single division high school state meet in high and low hurdles in separate years.

“But I never had any idea I would become a distance runner, or that there would ever be races like the Chuckanut Foot Race,” said Gale, who was Gretchen’s high school sweetheart. They’ll celebrate their 47th anniversary on July 22.

When Genevie indicated an interest in running, though, she was good enough as a fifth-grade sprinter to earn a trip to a national meet near Disneyland, where she met the four-time Olympic gold medal winner Jesse Owens (and has a picture to prove it).

About a decade later, while she was in college, she and her father were featured together on the cover of Northwest Runner magazine for August 1988. The Chuckanut Foot Race had given both plenty of inspiration.

“I was just cut out to be a fan,” said Gretchen, who snapped that cover photo. Gale has something even more memorable — Super 8 footage of Bob Beaman’s historic 29-2 1/2 long jump in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, one of four Olympics Genevie’s parents have seen.

“Dad and Mom just love track and field,” Genevie said. “They still go to meets everywhere and they have all kinds of memorabilia.”

Genevie recalls being grateful that her parents made running a creative, bonding activity, and never came close to burning her out.

“I never wanted to be a ‘Little League Dad,’ ” Gale said. “I just wanted her to love running.”

“You know,” he added, “I’ve always thought running people were the nicest people you could find, being kind and respectful to one another. That helps make events like the Chuckanut Foot Race that much more special.”

You’ll get no argument from his daughter.