The Front Runners & Walkers of San Diego (FRWSD) host their 25th annual Run and Stride with Pride run and walk on Saturday, July 29, at 7:30 a.m.

Runners and walkers of all skill levels – from beginners to competitive athletes – are encouraged to register.

The USA Track and Field (USATF) certified 5K course features a mostly flat terrain. The race begins at the intersection of Laurel Street and Sixth Avenue. It winds through Balboa Park around the Organ Pavilion, across the Prado, around the fountain, behind the Spanish Village and Natural History Museum, past the botanical gardens and along the drive within the park, ending back at its starting point.

Prizes will be awarded for the top three finishers from each age division, team and individual categories.

The fee to enter the run is $25, and $30 from July 24 to July 28. On race day, the fee increases to $35.

Registration will take place before the race, starting at 6:15 a.m. Registration will ends at 7:15 a.m. The official registration form can be downloaded from the FRWSD Web site, http://frsdweb.org. Online registration through www.active.com is also available. Early arrival is encouraged for race-day registration.

Net proceeds will be donated to The Center’s Youth Housing Project, a program designed to provide permanent, affordable housing for GLBT, questioning and HIV-positive youth.

As part of the entry fee, runners will also receive a commemorative T-shirt. The race also features a bag check, split times every mile, goodie bags, post-race refreshments and merchandise drawings.

A pre-registration event will take place at Bourbon Street on Friday, July 28, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. for runners and walkers to socialize and pick up their race materials.

On Saturday mornings every week, FRWSD meet at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Laurel Street in Balboa Park at 8:00 a.m. They also meet Monday and Wednesday evenings at 6:00 p.m. at the same location. The North County chapter meets in Magee Park in Carlsbad at 9:00 a.m. on Saturdays.

Routes are three- to six-mile runs or two- to three-mile walks. On Sunday mornings at 8:00 a.m., an unofficial group also meets for longer runs of six or more miles at various locations around the city.

Inspired by Patricia Nell Warren’s novel The Front Runner, the first Front Runner club began in San Francisco in 1974, and other clubs quickly began to form around the U.S., in Canada and abroad. International Front Runners is an affiliation of GLBT running/walking clubs that have organized in many of the larger cities around the world. FRWSD is a participating member of International Front Runners and has hosted the annual general meeting in the past.

Front Runners originated in San Diego in 1981 when Carol Pierce and Jeff Wynne founded the group as a means to get other gay and lesbian runners together.

Wynne said he got the idea to create a Front Runners club in San Diego after doing some consulting work in San Francisco, where he met with members of the San Francisco Front Runners. He then met Pierce at the May 1981 meeting of the San Diego Chapter of the Gay Academic Union (GAU), one of the largest GLBT organizations at the time. On the spot, Wynne and Pierce decided to found Front Runners San Diego, modeling the club after others that had been formed around the country.

“Front Runners was established as a special-interest group of the Gay Academic Union, and some other community groups also started out as special-interest groups of the GAU,” Wynne said. “But Front Runners took off on its own, and had a whole lot of interest in it and a whole lot of positive energy.”

Wynne said only eight people were at the first meeting on July 7, 1981, and after the first year, 65 people had joined the club. The following year, there were 100 members and today there are more than 200.

“People were showing up at meetings, and the club grew rather quickly,” Wynne said. “As the club started to grow, we made a decision. We needed to separate from the Gay Academic Union because it had its own lawyer of administrative rules and procedures and we wanted to grow at a pace and a style that was consistent with a running organization in the LGBT community.”

Many GLBT-related sports organizations formed in the 1980s around the country, including San Diego’s Different Strokes Swim Team (DSST), which formed in 1985 to prepare athletes for the first Gay Games in San Francisco in 1986. Many FRWSD members are also members of DSST.

Approximately 25 FRWSD members are competing in a variety of events at Gay Games VII, which is currently underway in Chicago through July 22.

Pierce said many GLBT athletic clubs and teams started as an alternative to the bar scene.

“I think the reason we sustained ourselves was because there’s still a want,” she said. “We have such a diverse crowd. I think that [the club] continues to maintain its balance and its need in the community – diversity in regard to professions and in regard to athletic level and in regard to age.”

In May 2005, the membership voted to change the official name of the club to Front Runners & Walkers San Diego to better reflect the activities within the club and its membership.

“Half of our group is walkers, practically,” Pierce said. “When we first started, the only walkers we really had were injured runners. Then there was a fellow who did race-walking and we got some other people involved. That’s when we really got into walking.”

Upcoming races FRWSD will participate in include: the 52nd annual Balboa Park 8 Mile and 3 Mile Runs on Aug. 5, the 29th annual America’s Finest City Half Marathon/5K on Aug. 20 and the Camp Pendleton Mud Run on Oct. 21.

For more information about FRWSD, call (619) 835-913, or visit http://frsdweb.org for a link to the Front Runner and race registration Web site.