NEWBERRY, S.C. — The City of Newberry had thousands of people traveling throughout the area to compete in the Spartan 10K race and more on Saturday.
The event continues into Sunday and features dozens of races, competitions, and challenges to help push participants. And the director of the race, Lauren Taylor, hopes it also brings many of those same people directly into the surrounding communities.
"For the full weekend, we're expecting probably somewhere between 6,500 to 7,000 runners," she said.
And these runners have come a long way, with some traveling from North Carolina and others from as far away as California.
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Isaac Thomas is one participant who came from Raleigh and said he's making the event a weekend stay here in the Midlands. But he's having to stay longer than he would like due to many hotels being booked full.
"When I first started looking a couple of weeks out, I was trying to stay here in Newbery it was all booked up and every hotel I had looked at showed no availability and everything like that which is good but, for me, it pushed me out a little bit further a little bit outside of Columbia," Thomas said.
Not only are hotels booked, but restaurants are seeing the impact of dozens of people heading into their stores.
"It's been really busy, I had to go get some hamburger buns and stuff for tonight because we ran low on those things," Neville Glover, owner of Grille On Main said.
Genesis Coffee Shop in downtown Newberry also expanded hours to accommodate the people in town for the event.
"We started opening up at 6 a.m. so they can come in before they had to be there," Claire Wooten said. "And more of them have come in as the week has gone on."
Glover added the event all-in-all is a great plus for the city.
"It's great because they come in and fill up the hotels, shop in our shops and eat in our restaurants and they learn about our town and that's always good,"