- November 28, 2024
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Each month, Lulu’s Oceanside Grill hosts a 5K Fun Run to benefit a local charity. This month will be the one-year anniversary of the revamped format.
BY MATT MENCARINI | STAFF WRITER
It’s been a year since LuLu’s Oceanside Grill revamped its charity 5K Fun Run.
When it started, it was held each week, and after a while became more of a chore. It was changed to once a month, and now, it has become what it was first intended to be: an event.
“We like to be involved in the community and help the community and give back to the community,” said Wes Lemoyne, a Lulu’s manager. “And the way that we figured it could do something for us and something for the community was to get a gathering of people, like at the Fun Run, and (have) proceeds from our event go to local charities.”
Lemoyne and Brett MacIver, another Lulu’s manager, stress the fact that they keep the charities local — within the county. They’ve partnered with Halifax Urban Ministries, a local Boy Scouts troop and Ormond Beach MainStreet, which was the first charity of the redesigned Fun Run and will be the charity for the one-year anniversary run June 18.
“We know that this community is really outdoorsy and health-conscious,” MacIver said. “So we wanted to factor in something that people like to do, (and) is fun, with charities involved. We kind of ran with that idea.”
Each month, the runners take to a newly designed 5K course. Matt Coleman has the task of designing the course each month, which always starts and ends at LuLu’s.
He has had runs on the beach and over the Granada Bridge. For the Fun Run the month of the Daytona 500, Coleman designed a course that had the runners do laps around the block.
There were 65 runners at the last run, and 20 of them were new. Lemoyne and MacIver said that ratio shows them that not only are they keeping their runners happy, but the word is spreading.
“We’ve been really fortunate with our community — the way our community operates — so I couldn’t be happier with how it has turned out,” Lemoyne said. “And since we made it monthly, it’s more of an event. People wait for it and they ask about it.”
Get your running shoes
Registration for the run is $10 for a runner’s first 5K, and $5 for each run after.
The registration fee includes an official Fun Run T-Shirt (first run only), a bottle of Fiji Water, a free Miller 64 beer, appetizer buffet after the race, awards, raffles and giveaways.
Call 673-2641 or visit www.LuLusOceansideGrill.com.
