Stephen Solbeck, Kentlands/Lakelands 5K Race Director

For 18 years, the Kentlands/Lakelands has sponsored a 5K Run, Walk and Kid’s Fun Runs. This year, the race will take place on Saturday, September 3rd starting at 8 am on Main Street near the Kentlands/Lakelands Market Square Plaza. This popular event includes a street fair with food and entertainment after the race.

Patch caught up with race director, Stephen Solbeck, to ask about the race and how it has changed over the years.

Patch: How long have you been the race director with this race and how did you become involved?

Solbeck: I have been the race director for about 8 years now. The event has matured to the point that it almost doesn’t need a race director. Every year we have been very lucky to have volunteers come aboard and quickly grasped their jobs and put their personalities into making improvements and making them work. My role is to work primarily to make sure that what takes place from the start of the race to when the runners cross the finish line works properly.

I have been a member of the Montgomery County Road Runners Club for close to 25 years and have been fortunate to have some very talented mentors. I have the experience of working with kids starting at 6 years old to half marathoners in their seventies. My wife and I directed the Roadrunners Club's Piece of Cake 10K for several years as well.

Patch: How has the race and events surrounding it developed over the past few years?

Solbeck: I think that the major improvements in the past few years have be the redesigning of the course and the use of the chip scoring system [an electronic timing system where runners wear a transponder on their shoe and their time is reported back to a central computer].. The other big improvement that has proved to be a big success is that we have entertainment along the course. It takes the runners minds off of a couple of steep hills. There are always changes behind the scenes that the runners never see and that is good.

Patch: What can you say about the people who regularly enter this race?

Solbeck:  What we have is a community event with a large percentage of the runners from the Gaithersburg area. Every year we have a few that register from other areas such as California, Florida, Illinois and Toronto, Canada. I’m not sure how they found out about us, but I think that a lot of the participants just want to come out and prove to themselves, that they can actually run 3.1 miles. We do have two kid’s fun runs which always bring out over 200 kids. That number is consistently growing.

One particular part of the event is that every year we have a kid’s art contest with a common theme. The winner of the contest has their art work put on the runner’s shirts. That is another part of the race’s personality.

Patch: This 5K is the largest in Montgomery County. Why do you think this race has become so popular?

Solbeck: I feel that we have created a name for ourselves as a well-organized event that has a very scenic course and has a food festival following the run. I think that the kid’s events have also been a big draw. Having over 100 course marshals protecting every street intersection makes for a very safe course. We also have strong support from the City of Gaithersburg. This includes the Mayor, the City Council, the city police and the Department of Public Works.

Patch: Is there anything that you would like to add that would be important for people to know?

Solbeck: I think that one important fact that needs to be emphasized is that we are an all volunteer event. We have people come in to work for an hour to people that take a few month out of their free time to put this all together. Every year there is a turnover of volunteers and every one of them has made this a success.

Runners can register online until Wednesday, Aug. 31 and in-person up until the start of the race on Saturday, Sept. 3.