An Annual Fundraiser
The Fools Run is a decades-old tradition. Following a covid hiatus, JDXC adopted if and hosted the 40th annual Fools Run at Night, with the help of JTRR and JYS.
The Fools Run is held near the Summer Solstice, starting and ending at Centennial Hall, offering 1-mile and 5k routes through downtown and the highlands.
Look for information about this year's Fools Run on our homepage each Spring.
Sponsors
The 2025 Fools Run was sponsored by:
- Juneau Bone & Joint Center
- AEL&P
- Allen Marine
- MRV Architects
- Juneau Greens
- Foodland
- NAO
- Pavitt Health and Fitness
-they are all awesome!
Costumes!
Wear a costume for maximum foolishness! There is a long tradition of multi-person costumes called ''centipedes''. One of the very best ever was worn the year Juneau's power transmission lines from Snettisham were knocked down. Half a dozen runners dressed as transmission towers, tied together with ''power lines,'' chased by someone dressed as an avalanche. It was gold.
There is a costume contest immediately before each race, with prizes for best group and solo costumes.
Event history
With a little creative math and loose definitions about what counted as a Fools Run during the pandemic years, 2024 was the 40th annual Fools Run. The man who co-founded it, and served as race captain for the first decade of its existence, Mr. Allen Edwards, spoke at the start of the 2024 race (the first running since before the pandemic). He and his compatriot, Paul Dick, ran it as a fundraiser for the fire department, generally through the downtown core, past many of the bars, in the days before cruise ships.
Over the years, the course changed, as did the host. For a long time it was a fundraiser for SAIL, and then KTOO, and then Tlingit and Haida (this event is an enormous lift, and burnout comes fast). As well as the course and host, the timing also changed. Originally it was Only Fools Run at Midnight (11:59 PM, to avoid confusion), but the start time moved to 9:00 PM when JDXC took over. It is considerably easier to recruit the dozens of helpers and JPD and Citizen Patrol volunteers required if the event doesn't begin at midnight.
We owe everyone who has ever helped put on this race an enormous thanks for their time and commitment. It's a wonderful event and an enormous gift to our community and all the good causes it has benefitted over the years. Its legacy is real and on-going.