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19 Mar 2023
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Here it is St. Patrick’s Day weekend on the Outer Banks and for this sandbar by the sea, it’a all about tradition.

Depending on when in the week St. Patrick’s Day falls, the tradition begin either the weekend after or before. Having  big celebration the day of during the middle of the week…well, we’re a tourist destination and when we celebrate something we want as many people on hand as possible, so weekends are when it happens in March.

Saturday was kind of the warmup for the big event, which of course, is the Kelly St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday.

The Running of the Leprechauns, though, is a nice little 5k or 10k race that Outer Banks Sporting Events puts on. The course is entirely in Nags Head and it’s pretty easy run—no huge elevation gains or difficult terrain to traverse.

At the 8:00 a.m. start time the skies were overcast with intermittent drizzled. Temperature was around 60 degrees, so it wasn’t bad at all.

And then the front moved in. Even by 8:20 when the first of the runners for the 5k crossed the finish line, the temperature was falling and winds were picking up from the northeast. And the winds picked up a little bit more and the temperature kept falling.

Looking at things on the bright side, though…no rain.

It was ultimately a good race though.

The runners seemed to genuinely have a good time. Quite a number of them were dressed in their St. Patrick’s Day finery for the event. Mike Kelly was on hand with some wonderful beef stew, which as the temperature fell was quite welcome. He also brought his signature sweet potato biscuits.

So it was a good run, so good food and a good time.

The Outer Banks has some surprising things to do. Be sure to spend some time in a Brindley Beach Vacations home and discover life on a sandbar.