Jost Van Dyke Invitational 5K Race Recap and Video

For the last ten years we've spent a week of vacation time in the British Virgin Islands on the island of Jost Van Dyke. The population there is around 300 people. Over time we've formed friendships with locals and other vacationers that visited each year at the same time we do.  In 2010 our friend Dan was selected by his running club to receive an entry into The Boston Marathon. This was a sort of "hall pass" to bypass the qualification requirements. In order to help him train while on vacation, we developed the Jost Van Dyke Invitational 5K. Holly and Dan were the only two competitors. We provided race bibs, entry form /  event guide, t-shirts, and medals.

The race holds some traditions in-place: the time and day of the week, race course, and post-race breakfast. But many things have changed too: This year we replaced medals with more natural tokens (which were left on the island - ingrates) and race certificates (soon come). We created a permanent race logo last year that still goes on all media and wearables. The wearables have improved too. We went from iron on t-shirts to long sleeved printed tech shirts. Of course, the race fee went up too.

On race day the Race Director, runners, and MaryJo (Dan's wife and race photographer) all gather in front of Perfect Pineapple's Store. While runners are corralled up they typically complain about the heat and hilly course. MaryJo does a great job capturing all the action in jpg while the RD tries to see how many video angles he can line up. If it wasn't for a dead GoPro battery it would have been four angles..... This year we had an extra spectator at the start line. A French guy on his way to town stuck around to watch the fun.

Once the race began MaryJo headed up the hill to take more pictures while Dave just sat on the stoop and played Candy Crush. The runners found another ACTUAL spectator on the course. A guy we met the day before at a bar.  He did not believe the race was real so he stumbled out of his villa to check. Boy was he surprised.
We don't have fancy bib tags for this race to track the location of our runners. We rely on the local cabbies and folks driving to work to post us on the race status. One person even informed us that Team Tizzel was in the lead!

Holly crossed the finish line first in under 39 minutes with Dan not too far behind. This was Holly's third overall victory and Dan's fourth consectutive overall male finish (plus he had an overall win in the inaugural event). Once all the athletes had a chance to cool down we hold the award ceremony and then send them to the showers before breakfast begins. Later in the day race shirts are worn for the afternoon pub crawl. This year some lady from Canada bought us a round. Sweet!

Here's our video from the race, the registration form / race guide, and the race report newsletter we send out when we get back home.  You can click on the images to make them a bit clearer.