Solstice tradition sends characters dashing through downtown

About 140 runners were foolish enough to race on Friday, the night of the summer solstice.

Only Fools Run at Night, originally titled Only Fools Run at Midnight, has been a coveted solstice tradition for 37 years. After a six-year hiatus, it was revived in 2024 as a fundraiser for the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé cross-country team. Since becoming associated with the school, the race is directed toward a younger audience and started at 9 p.m. This year, the race raised $3,500 for the JDHS cross-country team.

“It fits in with our vision as a cross-country team of just having a good time and running and building community,” said Abby Jahn, one of the JDHS cross-country coaches.

Carl Brodersen, dressed as a caveman, said that when he heard the cross-country team was resurrecting the race, he cold emailed asking to help organize it.

“It’s just such a wonderful community event,” said Brodersen, who helped the cross-country team organize the event. “At some point, we’ll hopefully get back to where it was before. This was like 300 people would come out and do this thing. Just full of energy. Some of my best memories from my teens and 20s were going all out to make a costume for this event, and I just wanted to make sure that I and future generations had an opportunity to dress like a fool and run around.”

The solstice was sunny and warm. Brodersen claims the good weather may have negatively impacted turnout.

“With any event in Juneau, the weather has to be good enough, but not too good,” he said.

Group costumes dominated the costume-contest podium.

Dressed in all black with their visible skin covered in blue paint, Kaylee Brown, Trevor Daniels, and Maeve Wolf became the performance art company Blue Man Group. They won first place and joined the applause, banging on their 5-gallon buckets.

Cianna Kahl, Alice Morgan Adams, and Kimberly Klawonn placed second wearing their costumes from a recent production of Alice in Wonderland at TAFY Dance Alaska. The trio could be seen practicing choreography from the show in the lead-up to the costume contest.

The third-place group dressed as bowling pins and a bowling ball. They traveled to Juneau for the National Guard ORCA exercise and hailed from Texas, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C.

The overall winner of the one mile race was Ferguson Wheeler. In second place was Jeremiah Sivley and Maeve Wolf took third place.

The women’s 5K winner was AJ Carothers, completing the race in 21 minutes and 28 seconds. The winner of the men’s 5K was Joey Dyson, with a time of 19 minutes and 55 seconds.

The men’s and women’s winners of the 5K race are both first-time “fools” and employees of Admiralty Environmental, a Juneau-based environmental consulting firm and water quality laboratory.

“I felt good about it,” said Dyson. “The hills are kind of tough. I haven’t run a timed 5K in quite a while, so I’m very happy with how I did.”

The sun was still shining at 10 p.m. as volunteers, JDHS cross-country runners, and their parents began packing up the finish line.

“It would be great if we could see more and more people come and make this more of a community staple again,” Jahn said. “I know in years past, there were potentially hundreds of people that would race it, so we’d like to just try to keep building it up.”

• Contact Natalie Buttner at natalie.buttner@juneauempire.com.