Clinton, N.Y. - This year's 3rd annual Clinton Shoppers' Stroll and 5K Jingle Jog was definitely the toughest, not for the runners who participated, but for the race director who put it on.

Race Director Mary Lisa Nolan says with the cooperation of a number of entities, the race was allowed to happen this year despite the spike in coronavirus cases locally, but with some guidelines, "In so many ways, where do we start? Just to get it approved we had to jump through many, many hoops. We kept pushing and pushing because we felt it was becoming now a third year tradition for so many families during the holidays."

Nolan says the biggest change this year was that runners had to go off in waves instead of having everyone start at the same time.

There were a total of 150 runners, so there were 5 waves of 30 runners each, with each wave going off in 15 minutes intervals.

Nolan says this year, there could also be no post-race celebration, "But people understand that. They’re just happy to be out here running a live race. We’ve done virtual for many months now and it’s nice to actually see people, even if it’s just our eyes."

Russ Stevener of Marcy ran the race for the first time on Saturday, "It’s just nice to be able to get out with everything going on. Not a lot of races this year so we found one and it’s a nice day for it so we figured we come out and get some exercise and enjoy yourselves."

Jackie Laflair of Clinton ran the race with her dad, "We’re looking forward to spending some time together and starting off the holidays with this run."

That is how 150 kicked off their holidays this year, and those too (the holidays) will also be different, but how different? We will see in the next few weeks.