RUN Wenatchee

By Steve Maher
RunWenatchee.com

LEAVENWORTH — It was apparently meant to be.

Nothing rankles marathon event organizers more than having mile markers lost, misplaced or stolen. If they do show up, it’s usually within a day or

No one knows how long Mile Marker 5 has been sitting in the water at a Leavenworth park.

two or perhaps a week at most.

But 11 months later?

That’s what happened this past weekend to Lynda Finegold, a founder of the Leavenworth Oktoberfest Marathon and Half-Marathon.

As Finegold and Colin Brine and their kids were biking through Leavenworth’s Waterfront Park on Sunday, they stopped to check out five raccoons wading on the side of a slough. As they were looking, Finegold happened to glance at the other side of the waterway. And there sat her event’s Mile Marker 5 — in its familiar blue and orange colors.

Everyone was flabbergasted.

“I said, ‘Oh look, there is our Mile Marker 5!” she recalled.

Finegold said the sign was not far from where it would have been placed a year ago this October for the 2013 race. She speculated someone had thrown it into the undergrowth above the water and then it had slid down the bank.

“But who knows. It’s been 11 months, man,” she said.

Indeed.