Firecracker

The time had come for yet another advance story for the Firecracker Fast 5K, and as far as Rock was concerned, the most notable element of this year's race was that, two days before the Fourth, only fifty people had registered. He began his story with the contrast between last summer's Firecracker, when a record crowd of over sixteen-hundred ran, and the present race, which had thus far generated sparse interest. The only thing Rock needed was to find the name of the fiftieth person to register.
Early on race day, it was clear that a late rush of entrants would put in place a field more typical in numbers of recent Firecrackers. The new oddity was that the race would begin and end indoors, in what looked like an old school building. Rock helped his friend Tom Zaloudek construct wooden banked curves around several tight hallway turns.