November 1, 1999
Sutliff Bridge 5K still appealing to runners
SUTLIFF – Fifty-three people turned up Sunday to run the 16th annual Sutliff Bridge 5K, and for race organizer Scott Sailor that was 53 runners too many. “If nobody showed up that would be great,” Sailor said.
Sailor did his best to discourage people from coming to the Sutliff Bridge race. He told people not to enter, he told people not to tell other runners about the race, he promised them that “this is the last year.” Sailor even changes the day of the race every year to deter anyone from entering. “He’s the best (public relations) agent that ever lived,” Lenore Neal, 81, said, laughing.
Neal and her 83-year-old husband, Willard, sit and watch the race while their grandchildren run the 5K. The Mount Vernon Couple said their sons David and Steve helped Sailor begin the race in 1984 to save the 100-year-old Sutliff Bridge from destruction.
“We heard they were going to tear down the bridge and we wanted to preserve the bridge,” said David Neal, 57, of Davenport.
Sailor and the Neal brothers were rewarded by their efforts to rally support for the bridge over the Cedar River when it was added to the National Historic Register last year as a landmark for the tiny town of Sutliff, located six miles south of Lisbon.
The landmark has put Sutliff on the map, making it more difficult for Sailor to keep the race a mystery. He said he still organizes the race because people ask him to.
Winners do not get prizes or awards, except for some “ugly” T-shirts, Sailor said.
He said he does not want any sponsors because printing the sponsors’ names on the shirts would just make the T-shirts uglier, and does not want the race to be a big event. “One year we had 151 people,” he said, his face contorting in disgust. He pointed at his two-door 1986 Honda Civic. “It (the race material) has to fit in that.”
Sailor was not successful in tricking race-newcomer Bob Saunders. Saunders, 51, of Iowa City, said he wasn’t sure it the race really existed. He said he found out about the race because he read a magazine article about it. “It’s easily the most interesting race that I’ve run,” he said. “It sounded so unusual because all the races are so big, so formal. This is a race that doesn’t publicize itself, that doesn’t have a Web site.”
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History of Sutliff Bridge 
