Every October, somebody who has lived in Westridge for a decade walks out to Century Drive on a Sunday morning expecting the usual quiet and finds a timing mat, a folding table of paper cups, and forty or fifty people in bibs stretching in the Cascade Lakes Welcome Center lot. Then they try to park there and get waved off. This isn't a fluke. It's the Fall Foot Races, and this year it also happens to be the fiftieth running of the race that started the whole tradition.
The Bigfoot 10K has been on Bend runners' calendars since 1976, which makes 2026 its fiftieth year. That's a genuinely old footrace by any Central Oregon standard, older than most of the trails it now shares with mountain bikers and older than the Deschutes River Trail sections it eventually connects to. What's easy to miss if you don't live along this stretch of Century Drive is that the race doesn't just use your street. It starts on it.
Why the start line landed in your neighborhood
Race organizers didn't pick the Cascade Lakes Welcome Center by accident. The course drops nearly 500 feet of elevation in its opening miles, and that descent is the entire point. Runners begin at the Welcome Center, roll downhill on the paved bike path, connect to the Deschutes River Trail, and coast through the Old Mill District before finishing at Riverbend Park. The Bigfoot 10K takes the same downhill start and has helped generations of local runners chase personal records precisely because gravity is doing some of the work for the first several miles.
That elevation profile only exists because of where Westridge sits relative to the rest of Bend. The neighborhood's position along the Century Drive corridor, higher and farther west than the Old Mill, is exactly what gives the course its fast, scenic reputation. Residents aren't just adjacent to a nice race. The topography of where they live is the reason the race is fast at all.
What's actually running past your house
The event now covers four distances under one banner, organized by Run Bend and the Central Oregon Running Klub. Here's the breakdown for Sunday, October 4, 2026:
| Race | Start Time | Start Location | Finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall Foot Half Marathon | 8:00 a.m. | Cascade Lakes Welcome Center | Riverbend Park |
| Bigfoot 10K | 9:00 a.m. | Cascade Lakes Welcome Center | Riverbend Park |
| Fleet Foot 5K | 9:30 a.m. | Riverbend Park | Riverbend Park |
| Littlefoot Kids Run | 10:30 a.m. | Riverbend Park | Riverbend Park |
The half marathon route, in its second year, adds a wrinkle the older Bigfoot course doesn't have: after cruising through the Old Mill, it loops around to First Street Rapids on a newly constructed pedestrian path before finishing at Riverbend Park. If you've noticed new paving near the rapids this year and wondered what it was for, that's part of the answer.
The parking mistake almost everyone makes once
Here's the detail that catches people off guard every single year, and it's the one piece of local knowledge worth actually remembering if you live in Westridge.
Parking is not permitted at the starting line. The Cascade Lakes Welcome Center lot is drop-off only on race morning. If you're planning to watch a friend start, or if you simply want to see what the fuss on your street is about, you cannot park at the start. Real parking is available at Riverbend Park, which is also the finish line, meaning spectators effectively have to choose between watching the start (briefly, from a drop-off zone) or watching the finish (with an actual parking spot). Runners driving themselves to the half marathon or 10K are encouraged to carpool, bike, or arrange a shuttle rather than count on parking near the Welcome Center.
For anyone running or spectating the shorter distances, the logistics are simpler. Fleet Foot 5K and Littlefoot Kids Run parking is available near Riverbend Park or the Old Mill District itself, since both of those races start and finish closer to town.
The one errand worth doing the day before
If you're running any distance, packet pickup happens the Saturday before the race, October 3, from 2 to 4:30 p.m. at FootZone in Bend. Race-day pickup is technically available at the starting line, but with drop-off-only parking and a point-to-point course, giving yourself one less thing to manage on Sunday morning is worth the short trip on Saturday.
What else is happening the same weekend
The Fall Foot Races land on the same weekend as the Bend Fall Festival downtown, which runs Friday through Sunday, October 2 through 4. That means anyone who wants a quieter version of race weekend, or who'd rather skip the road closures on Century Drive entirely, has a legitimate alternative a few miles east. It also means Sunday morning downtown will already have some foot traffic and street activity independent of the race, so if you're headed toward Old Mill or the river corridor that day, expect both crowds to overlap a bit near the finish line at Riverbend Park.
For residents who'd rather stay closer to home and let the race pass without much disruption to their own plans, the corridor still has its usual weekend options farther up the hill. The WorldMark Seventh Mountain Resort area near Widgi Creek Golf Course sits up Century Drive in the opposite direction from the race route, untouched by the morning's road and trail traffic. It's a reasonable place to spend a Sunday if a few thousand runners passing below your street isn't your idea of a good morning.
Fifty years of a race that started as a school fundraiser
The Bigfoot 10K's longevity isn't just a trivia fact. It's still a fundraiser for the Bend-La Pine School District's cross country teams, and to date it has put more than $50,000 back into those programs for travel, equipment, and everyday team needs. That's a half-century of a neighborhood-adjacent event quietly funding youth sports without much fanfare, which says something about how this particular corner of Bend treats its own traditions. The Fall Foot Half is a newer addition, now in its second year, built to sit alongside that fifty-year history rather than replace it.
For anyone who has lived along Century Drive long enough to remember previous Octobers, the race is less an interruption than a marker of the season turning. The bike path gets busy for one Sunday morning, the Welcome Center lot fills with runners instead of hikers, and then by early afternoon it's back to being the quiet stretch of road that leads up toward Mt. Bachelor for everyone else the other fifty-one weekends of the year.
If you're weighing whether Westridge's mix of quiet streets and easy access to events like this fits what you're looking for in Bend, or if you're already here and thinking about what's next for your own property, David Holland at Bend Living has spent years watching how neighborhoods like this one actually live day to day, not just how they show up on a listing sheet. Schedule a consultation when you're ready to talk through what your corner of Bend is really worth, on your timeline, not the market's.
