Organizers of the Covington Days 5k Fun Run have big plans for the event for this year and beyond.

The Coalition for a Healthy Community, which created the Cruzin’ Covington Passport program for area elementary students last year, has taken over the 5k Fun Run that kicks off the second day of the festival Saturday, July 18, according to coalition member Pam Kramer.

“We are in the second year with the Passport,” Kramer said. “We had planned to do a 5k and this fell in our lap nicely.”

In April the torch was passed to the CHC when Gina Guddat, who had gotten the event off the ground a few years ago, approached one of the coalition members about taking on the fun run.

Because the committee is a smaller group and didn’t have enough volunteers to coordinate the race while they were wrapping up work on the Cruzin’ Covington Passports, “we knew we had to find someone to manage it for us.”

A recommendation came from Patty Swedberg, who runs Raise the Bar, a local triathlon training team. Swedberg had put together the Passport Web site for the CHC and knew just the person to handle organizing the race.

Swedberg suggested Toby Mollett.

“She had worked with Toby on another event … and he’s great,” Kramer said. “We definitely got into this later than we should. We were so thankful when Toby came on board.”

Mollett, who lives in the Covington-Black Diamond area, found Swedberg about four years ago while looking for a team to help him with his triathlon training. He’s been competing in races for nine years.

Instead, Swedberg decided Mollett would be a great trainer, and asked him to be a running coach.

Last year he got his first taste of event organizing.

“We got an offer to put on a triathlon,” Mollett. “It’s part of a national series. It’s called Xterra. Patty looked right at me and said, ‘You want to do this?’ So I took that on.”

Mollett seemed to have done a lot of things right because Xterra, which incorporates swimming, mountain biking and trail running into events, saw a serious spike in membership as a direct result of the race here last year.

“It’s been fun putting that on this year,” he said. “It’s such a great event. It’s a lot easier in the second year. That’s what we’re trying to do now with the 5k (in Covington) is laying that ground work.”

Last year about 170 runners participated in the 5k during Covington Days, but Mollett is shooting higher, even though starting in April has made it a challenge.

“The response hasn’t been what we’d like it to be but we’re still putting on a great event,” he said. “The people who participate will go out and get ready for next year and tell all their friends.”

Still, Mollett is confident in their ability to market the event, and Kramer said “we’re definitely getting the word out” doing things like putting flyers into goodie bags for the Kent Cornucopia Days race this coming weekend as well as e-mailing some 3,000 potential participants.

Mollett has also suggested some changes to the race, Kramer said, like offering cash prizes as another incentive for folks to participate with $100 going to the top male and female, $50 to the second place finisher and $25 for third.

And in the future, Mollett would like to see the event grow.

“We definitely have long term goals for the race,” he said. “We’d like to add a 10k. We’d like to add a high school challenge where high school cross country teams compete … to win a pizza party.”

In the meantime, Kramer said, they’ve also tied in the Passport program with the 5k as the event is on the calendar in each passport that was handed out.

“We’re hoping to have a bunch of kids there,” she said. “And it’s only $10 (for kids under 12) which includes the T-shirt.”

Kramer added that they are working on getting more prizes for the drawings but already have spa gift certificates and Red Robin gift cards, among other things, with a nod toward all the donations they have received, “our community is so generous.”

“We might have goody bags that we may have to tie together because they’re going to be so full,” Mollett said.

Plus any profit that is made goes back into CHC programs that will directly benefit Covington residents.

Mollett said that with less than two weeks to go they are as ready as can be at this point.

“We have the course, we have volunteers for the course, we have the timing, we have food at the end,” he said. “All we need now are participants.”

To register for the race log onto www.cruzinpassport.com.