The second Saturday in June is traditionally Market Square Day in Portsmouth. MSD is a huge street festival with arts, crafts, music, a 10K road race, and lots of other great things for visitors and residents alike.
Portsmouth’s Market Square Day typically attracts a ton of visitors, often in the 60,000 plus range! From 9:00 AM until 4:00 PM most of Downtown Portsmouth is closed to cars
Three performance stages feature local and regional musicians, over a hundred vendor booths featuring local crafts, products and food offered by artists, crafters and merchants – many from the Seacoast area.
MSD traditionally kicks off with a 10K (6.2 miles) road race starting and finishing in the downtown area. The runners enjoy a scenic course through the business district and residential neighborhoods of Portsmouth.
This Saturday I was working as a Course Marshal around the 5.5 mile point so I had a great view of all the smiling (and the huffing and puffing) runners as they passed by. Here are the leaders at that point.
Turned out that was the way they finished too. Bob Wiles, the guy in front, won in 31 minutes and 40 seconds. Last year’s winner Patrick Moulton was second this time.
And here’s a short video of the leaders and a few more passing my station. I had to put the camera down and get to work directing traffic after this clip as the rest of the 2,000 runner pack passed by over the next 45 minutes.
It had started to sprinkle about halfway through the race which turned into a steady rain the rest of the day. That put a damper on the festival but lots of happy and damp folks were still out there having fun and enjoying the day.
If buying a home in the Portsmouth NH or southern Maine Seacoast area is in your future or if you just want some more information about our beautiful and historic area, we invited you to visit New Hampshire and Maine Real Estate to keep in touch and see what’s going on.
My partner Ann Cummings and I would be delighted to help you or answer an questions you may have.