Hundreds of runners and walkers swarmed Rapid City’s bike path Thanksgiving morning with a single goal in mind.

Finish the annual 5K Turkey Trot and get entered to win a free pie.

The Black Hills Runners Club’s annual Thanksgiving Day run attracted almost 900 participants for pre-feast exercise, with proceeds benefiting running and youth throughout western South Dakota.

Then there were the pies -- all 350 of them baked by Colonial House.

“It’s funny how competitive it gets, even though they have four pies waiting at home,” race director Lesley Warren said. “That’s evidently half the fun.

“People just like to do things with their family on Thanksgiving,” Warren said. “And then there’s that fallacy that if you run, you can eat whatever you want later today.”

Deb and Jason Warr of Rapid City were ready to break a three-year losing streak.

“We’re on a bit of a dry spell. This is the year we’re hoping to take home a pie,” Deb Warr said. “You can just buy them at Colonial House, but it feels better if you actually worked at it.”

She has been running the race every year for about a decade. But it was their daughter Miranda’s first time.

“I can run really fast,” the 5-year-old said. “She’s going to have to come and catch me.”

She knew exactly what pie she woul choose if she won -- “Blueberry, blueberry, blueberry.”

Her dad had other ideas. He was hoping for cherry.

“It’s been a divided issue,” Deb Warr said.

“We need to win three of those,” Jason Warr said.

Mark and Julie Elias have made the Turkey Trot a Thanksgiving tradition.

Thursday marked the family’s second Thanksgiving in Rapid City. And with the kids, Megan and Aaron, home from college, it made sense to try to win another pie or two.

“The pie was good,” Mark Elias said. “We’d even do it without the pie, but it’s a nice incentive.”

“We just had fun,” Julie Elias said.

The whole family runs for exercise, and before moving to Rapid City, they used to do a Fourth of July run together in their Iowa hometown. They all crossed the finish line Thursday within a span of about 8 minutes.

As for the Warrs?

They ended up with three pies, one for every year they lost. All pumpkin.

“We didn’t get three cherry,” Jason Warr said. “This wasn’t the plan.”

Contact Emilie Rusch at 394-8453 or emilie.rusch@rapidcityjournal.com.