Coon Dog Day 5k – July 10, 2010 – Saluda, NC

It’s back! But maybe you never knew it was gone.

The Coon Dog Day 5k had been part of the Coon Dog Day Hooha (my word – I think they refer to it as a festival or some such thing) in the town of Saluda for years. The Coon Dog Day event attracts thousands of visitors to the quaint little town of Saluda and the 5k race was a popular kickoff to this all-day affair. But the race was discontinued after 2007. There was never an explanation but I always suspected it was too much of a logistical complication for a few hundred runners when the town was planning for the event and the associated parking challenges for thousands of visitors.

The course is modified so that it does not start and finish in the town of Saluda, but instead will start and finish at Saluda Mountain Jamboree Park. It looks to me like it’s a similar (or perhaps the same) course, it just starts and finishes at a different point. The race goes through downtown Saluda at about the halfway point so you can smell the food that the street vendors are carefully preparing for the day ahead. The entire course is quite pleasant – I’ve done it three times.

Here’s a map of the course …

Online registration is available at Go-Green Events. For more information visit the Race Organizer’s Website.