Saturday, April 24, 1999 -- Kanawha City
Emmanuel Baptist Church 5K
Story and photos by Don Parks.

[Coverage/Recap w/Pics] [Picture Set 1] [Picture Set 2] [Results]

The racers head out into the morning sun

The folks at Emmanuel Baptist Church, in Charleston, know that maintaining good physical fitness is an excellent compliment to spiritual health. To this end, Saturday, April 24th, they held the Sixth Annual Fitness Day. The day started at 8:00am with the running of the 5K Fitness Run through the beautiful neighborhood streets of Kanawha City. A wonderful crowd was treated to spectacular spring weather with mild temperatures and sunny skies.

Glenn Baldwin ran away from the competition

The 3.1 mile course was a flat run starting and finishing at the Kanawha City Recreation Center. The runners headed out on a straight path to the halfway point where they turned right, ran one block, turned right again and headed back for the finish. As the race progressed the top runners quickly began to take up positions in the front and distance themselves from one another. By the time they reached the finish it was Glenn Baldwin who was alone in front for the overall win. Crossing the line unchallenged in second place was Tim Howard with Aaron Kaylor taking third after fending off Bill Schwartz in fourth.

Christina Rawson raced to a fifth overall finish

The competition among the top women was a bit closer with Christina Rawson finishing strong with a fifth overall finish. Not too far back was Kelly McGraw taking second among the ladies with another impressive finish, seventh overall. Keeping McGraw in sight, but unable to close the gap, was Linda Detrick who rounded out the top three finishing ninth overall and giving the women three top 10 overall finishers.

If running wasn't your style, the fitness day had plenty more to offer the whole family for the rest of the day. Everything including an arobathon, coed volleyball, bowling, kids's olympics and horseshoes were on the schedule and open to the public. If you missed it this year, we'll be looking for you next spring when it'll be time again for Emmanuel Baptist Church to exercise your body as well as your soul.

* Sorry to say that no times were officially recorded for the day's race, but the wonderful organizers at Emmanuel Baptist Church hope to be able to provide timing next year.