BY MATT KITE for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 6/19/2026
I was born six years before Sound to Narrows, but I can confidently say it will outlive me. In fact, I feel lucky to have survived last Saturday’s 54th edition of the venerable fun run.
Since 1973, Sound to Narrows has been attracting runners, walkers, and other fitness junkies to its hilly tour of Tacoma’s northwest tip. This year’s race included the traditional main race, which is typically 12 kilometers (7.46 miles) long, plus a 5K (3.1 miles), a 2K (1.24 miles), and a diaper dash after the awards ceremony. Thanks to ongoing construction near Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, the main race was lengthened to approximately 7.8 miles, but it wasn’t the addition of .34 miles that left runners gasping for oxygen. It was the new hill.
The modified course took runners all the way from Vassault Park to Point Defiance Park’s waterfront promenade. After reaching Owen Beach, we hung a left and ventured inland. That meant going up and up. And up.
Said event manager Danette Felt during an interview two days before the race, “Years ago, when we had our normal 12K, New Balance flew out one of their professional runners, Matt Downin. He won, of course. He came back and said, ‘Danette, that was the hardest 12K in the country I’ve ever run.’ So it’s going to be even harder, and it will make everyone feel really good.”
Downin, as it happened, was a glutton for punishment and returned to win the race three straight years, from 2006 to 2008. Despite the race’s formidable hills, he averaged 5:03 per mile in 2007.
How would he have fared on the new hill? I didn’t give it much thought as I trudged up its steep incline, slowly passing runners who had been reduced to a walk. I had my own problems, the first of which was making it to Five Mile Drive with something left in the tank.
I remembered Felt’s comments on the hill and its abrupt rise as I neared its peak.
“Even when you’re driving down it,” she said, “you can’t quite see the road at the very top. Where is the road? It’s right there.”
Somewhere near the crest, someone managed a triumphant, “We did it!”
As if. We still had nearly five miles to go.
I’ve run Sound to Narrows three times, and all three experiences have been memorable. At my first, in 1987, I was a 19-year-old sophomore at Shoreline Community College. Earlier that spring, I had read the story of the controversial Garritson family from Fullerton, California. To the horror of some in the running community, the father had whipped his eight children, several of them prepubescent, into world-class shape. They ran up to 60 miles a week, trained relentlessly on hills, and set age-group records every time they raced.
As I neared the finish line that year, I heard someone chasing me uphill. Their turnover was machine-gun quick, and their breathing was even faster. Who was this? I turned to see a tiny girl, ponytail bobbing behind her, sprinting past me.
The mystery girl turned out to be Carrie Garritson, 10 years old. She won the women’s race, much to the chagrin of her older competitors who were fighting for top prize money, and beat most of the men, too, while earning a headline in The News Tribune. She finished in 43:12, 10 seconds ahead of me. I averaged 5:49 per mile that day and placed 71st overall.
Carrie and the rest of her siblings, perhaps not surprisingly, peaked before high school. I peaked in college while running cross country and track at Western Washington University and then enjoyed another decent stretch of racing in my late 30s and early 40s.
I didn’t run Sound to Narrows again until 2019, when, at 51, I clocked 50:46, good enough for a 6:48-per-mile pace and 62nd place overall. I finished third in my age division that year behind two Tacoma running legends, Mike Lynes and Dan Salazar. I’ve been chasing both since college but have yet to beat either.
After a productive winter of training, I signed up well in advance of this year’s race, but an untimely virus and a busy schedule conspired to undercut my preparation. Before the race started, during a pitch-perfect rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Staff Sergeant Anthony Elliott from JBLM’s America’s First Corps Band, I consoled myself that the new course was going to be brutal for everyone. It was.
The new hill, when added to the string of hills that constitute the final stretch, meant we’d be climbing a total of 743 feet. I surprised myself on curvy Five Mile Drive and passed several runners still gassed from the climb from Owen Beach, but I fizzled as we left Point Defiance Park and began the hilly finish. It was all I could do to hold form and finish in 1:00:53. I averaged 7:48 per mile, placed 198th overall, and was third in my age division again. Lynes and Salazar were no-shows but would have left me in their dust. Easily.
Somehow, though, I felt energized as I hopped on my bike for the short ride home. The June sun shone brilliantly. I had just celebrated with nearly 7,000 runners and walkers on the streets of Tacoma. And Sound to Narrows, once again, had proved why it’s such a mainstay in the community.
It’s the 400 volunteers. It’s the JBLM soldiers who run together and model exemplary behavior before, during, and after the race. It’s the local schools that sign up for the Fit for Sound to Narrows program. It’s the cheerleaders, residents, and yes, one garage band, that line Vassault Street all the way to the finish.
It’s the employees from Tacoma Water who tap and flush nearby fire hydrants to provide water in paper cups at aid stations and the finish line. It’s the consistently awesome race T-shirts, with this year’s designed by local artist Delaney Saul. It’s the money raised, $10,000-plus this time, for Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital.
Everything about Sound to Narrows screams joy.
No surprise, then, that the race is the oldest 12K in the state. Modeled after San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers, Sound to Narrows began during the 1970s running boom and predates two other mainstays in Washington: Spokane’s Bloomsday and Port Townsend’s Rhody Run. With any luck, it will still be here 54 years from now.
“Wouldn’t that be fun?” Felt said as we wrapped up our interview. “I don’t think Tacoma is gonna let it go. When Tacoma, when they get their hooks in something, it stays, right?”
