The Gig Harbor Turkey Trot Started With 15 People

In 2002, Tim Holmes’s oldest son challenged him to run a marathon. Holmes, a chiropractor in Gig Harbor, went looking for local runs to train with and couldn’t find any. So he invited his friends, his family and his patients to meet him on Thanksgiving morning for a 5K instead, and asked each of them to bring two cans of food for the local food bank.

Fifteen people came. The next year, 200.

In 2019 the race passed 3,000 participants, which is a strange outcome for something that started as a training run with no race attached to it. It’s still on the same morning, still asks for two cans, and still gives the money away.

Here’s how the morning works.

Before you go

It starts at 8am. That’s an hour earlier than either Tacoma race, so if you’re used to the Norpoint Turkey Trot or the Proctor one, set your alarm accordingly.

Pick up your packet Wednesday. It’s 2 to 6pm at Chapel Hill Church, 7700 Skansie Ave. On Thursday, pickup opens at 7am at the start line on Judson Street. If you want a shirt, they’re $20 at pickup.

Register before race day. Online registration is $30 through November 25 and doubles to $60 on Thursday. Kids 12 and under are free if you register them ahead of time.

Two cans, no glass. Bring them to the starting line parking lot on Thursday morning and look for the donation vans. The food goes to the Gig Harbor Peninsula FISH Food Bank and Food Backpacks 4 Kids, and the entry fees go to those groups plus the Bischoff Food Bank and scholarships for local high schoolers.

Leave the dog at home. The City of Gig Harbor doesn’t allow dogs on the course. It’s a city rule, not a preference.

The start is the Judson Street parking lot. Registration and pickup open there at 7am.

The race also asks for volunteers, which is worth knowing if you’d rather hand out water than run.

Wednesday: get the bib out of the way

Packet pickup is the day before, and doing it then is the difference between a calm Thanksgiving morning and a queue at 7:40am. Chapel Hill Church is at 7700 Skansie Ave, and it’s a new spot this year: in 2025 pickup was at Gig Harbor United Methodist Church on Pioneer Way. Don’t navigate to the old one.

Shirts are sold separately at $20. That’s worth knowing before you assume one is in the bag.

Thursday: the start on Judson Street

Registration and pickup open at 7am at the start line, and the race goes at 8. Walkers and anyone pushing a stroller start near the back, which is both the instruction and the sensible plan on a course that runs through a working waterfront town.

The donation vans are in the parking lot. Drop the cans before you line up, not after, because after the race you will be thinking about breakfast.

The course

It’s a 5K from the Judson Street lot. It’s late November, so assume cold and plan for wet. There’s a course map on the race page.

The numbers, if you like the numbers

Local coverage has reported the donation totals, and they’re larger than you’d guess for a 5K. In 2023, food collected at the race weighed more than 2,900 pounds for FISH Food Bank, with another 2,000-plus pounds going to Food Backpacks 4 Kids, according to Gig Harbor Now.

That’s the part worth telling a kid who is complaining about the cold.

After: the waterfront

You finish a few blocks from the water. Skansie Brothers Park is at 3211 Harborview Dr, and the walk from there along Harborview Drive is the obvious way to cool down.

The park has a history that suits the morning. It’s named for four Croatian brothers who fished out of Gig Harbor around the turn of the twentieth century and ran the Skansie Boat Building Company, and the family’s 1908 house and netshed are still there, sold to the city in 2002. There’s a memorial to Gig Harbor fishermen lost at sea. Restrooms at the park are open 5am to 10pm.

From the park, Harborview Drive runs past the netshed and a string of small waterfront parks and viewpoints. Give it an hour, more if the weather cooperates, which it may not.

If it’s pouring

The race page says nothing about calling it off for weather, so plan to get wet. Layers you can shed, a bag for the finish, and a dry change of clothes in the car covers most of it. The waterfront walk is the part to cut if the rain settles in.

The other two

Tacoma has two more Thanksgiving races on the same morning. The Norpoint Turkey Trot starts at 9am in Northeast Tacoma, hills included. The Tacoma City Turkey Trot starts at 9am in Proctor on a certified course, with a kids 1K at 10:15.

Three 5Ks, three different mornings.