Bob-A-Long’s eponym — Bob Thouvenel — is synonymous with The Dalles running

In this case, the course will be at Sorosis Park, perched above The Dalles — a place Thouvenel has probably logged more steps (many, long before Google Fit) than anybody else. Thouvenel was a sophomore in high school in 1959 when then-Coach Al Miller started the school cross country program and mapped out the Sorosis site (before it was a park) for a 1.8-mile course. (Note: Lest you think the Sorosis course is hilly, go run a few intervals up the hill near the water tower, which is part of the original route Miller laid out.)

“At that time is was just a lot of pine trees and scrub oak and there wasn’t really any lawn up there,” Thouvenel said. “There was quarter-mile dirt/sand track in there and that was part of our course.”

“We’ve been using that place since 1959.”

This weekend’s event is a fund-raiser for the Riverhawk cross country team — the Bob-A-Long run and walk on Oct. 5. The fundraiser, the third of its kind, works like this: Participants can make a tax-deductible donation to the cross country program and then, beginning at 10 a.m., walk, jog or run the three course options of a mile, 3,000 meters or 5,000 meters. Or, they can simply stop by the park for the fellowship. There will be participants from multiple states, including some of Thouvenel’s former athletes and/or their families.

“Washington, California, Arizona, Idaho and Minnesota,” Thouvenel said of some of the expected visitors/participants, including all four of his children — to also help him celebrate his birthday. 

This is the third Bob-A-Long; the first was held in 2004 when Thouvenel turned 60. He was still the head The Dalles cross country coach and an assistant with the school’s track and field program — his 37th season — at the time. Twenty years later, Thouvenel is still monitoring workouts and helping young athletes reach their goals as a volunteer coach.

“We did it 20 years ago when I turned 60, and then we decided to make it a fund-raiser for the cross country team,” he said of the Bob-A-Long. “We did it when I turned 70, and I’ll be 80 this week, so we decided to do another one.

“This one might be the biggest one it looks like, just based on the signups.”

Thouvenel’s penchant as a coach is to help runners — of all abilities — improve and appreciate the value of running. He’s also helped coach 29 boys teams and 20 girls teams to the OSAA state meet.

A part of this weekend’s fundraiser is recognition for the decade — limited to the past seven — with the most participants. Either Thouvenel, or his wife of 36 years, Mary Beth, can quickly recall highlights of the cross country and track and field programs — some since he started coaching in the late 1960s. 

Thouvenel was head track and field coach for 32 seasons at The Dalles and there have been plenty of milestones since he got his start in 1968. Like in 1997, when Scott Limbach led The Dalles to the OSAA Class 3A boys state cross country championship. Limbach led a team that included Hector Osuna, Luke Habberstad, Matt Mercer, Justin Harjo, Ben Ballinger and Aaron Vit to the crown.

With minor prompting and/or details added by Mary Beth, Thouvenel can rattle off the whereabouts of many of his hundreds of former athletes, including the seven who brought the blue, first-place team trophy back to The Dalles. “One of them is a professor at the University of Oregon [Habberstad] … Mercer, I think he’s back east somewhere … Aaron Vit was on that team; I haven’t seen him since he graduated from high school,” Thouvenel reminisced.

A more recent addition to the trophy case is the 2022 boys state championship plaque, with two of Thouvenel’s former runners and current cross country coaches — Jill Bell (Pearson) and her assistant Mandi Williams (FitzGustafson) — at the helm of the Riverhawk program.

They are part of the female running tradition at The Dalles, which reached the statewide level when Thouvenel helped train Brenda Bailey to the 1979 state cross country meet. While Bailey was the first The Dalles High female to qualify for state, four years earlier in 1975, Steve Taylor finished runner-up at the AAA state meet at Lane Community College.

“That was kind of a muddy day,” Thouvenel said. “I don’t know that we knew of what to expect from him. I think at the district meet he was runner-up.”

Fourteen years after Taylor’s feat, and 10 years after Bailey’s, The Dalles had its first girls team qualify for the state cross country meet and it brought home the 1989 AA third-place trophy. Ten years later, in 1999, Williams won the 3A state cross country individual crown — after finishing runner-up as a sophomore in 1998.

Thouvenel was a sophomore — “I think I was probably like fourth or fifth runner” — on that first Al Miller-coached The Dalles High team, which qualified for the 1959, 1960 and 1961 state meets at Portland’s Wilson High School and at Bush Pasture Park in Salem. Ten years later, Thouvenel was coaching the Riverhawk (then nicknamed Indian) program, which finished fifth in the state meet.

Since then, there have been a steady dose of young runners, training on the Sorosis Park trail — just bobbing along, under the watchful eyes of Thouvenel.