Atoms race for booster club

Jennifer Allshouse, a freshman at Annandale, woke up at 7:00 in the morning on Saturday, May 17th, laced up her sneakers and headed to Annandale, pumped for the 5K race. When she arrived she made a playlist on her IPod and stretched to warm up for the race.  At 8:30 the runners lined up at the starting point, anticipating a shot from the starter pistol,  which is the signal commonly used to start a race. The piercing boom from the gun never sounded, due to problems with the pistol, but the runners still got off to a great start.
             Parents, students, and friends of Annandale High School came out to run the 5K, which is about 3.1 miles, in support of Annandale’s booster club. All of the money raised was given to Annandale’s Athletic Department so that they can afford newer and better equipment, uniforms and provide better care of the fields.
                The organizers of the 5K race wanted to have at least one-hundred and fifty people in attendance, but aimed to have around two-hundred. During the race in 2007, the number of participants was about the same as this year’s approximately 150 attendee’s, though the student’s were much more involved in the planning of the event this time around. A reason for this may be that the organizers of this race set up a competition between the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes at Annandale. The class that had the most people sign up for the race earned money for their class.
                “After I ran I felt awesome, I haven’t run in a while because soccer ended so I came out to get back in shape. I also wanted to run because they had doughnuts afterwards.” Allshouse was referring to the two tables they set up with a variety of food from the races’ sponsors.  These supporters donated gifts, raffle prizes, money, water, food, and even the traffic cones and vests.   Magill’s, Glory Days and Gold’s Gym were just a few of the races’ patrons. There were also many other community businesses that contributed to the race.
In the future,  Mr. Price, one of the organizers of the races, said that next year the arranger’s of the race want to have a greater student involvement and that they would also like this race to be better known throughout the community and school. This event is an important fimdraiser for the booster club, next year they would like to have at least 100 more runners.