Walton Park's "overall tackiest" award in 2024 was one small trophy in a neighborhood-wide competition that has quietly turned into one of the more interesting logistics puzzles in Chesterfield County: who gets to be the star of the show this year, and who has to wait their turn.
Most people who've heard of the CarMax Tacky Light Run know the outline. Every December, thousands of runners and walkers move through Walton Park in ugly sweaters, following a 6K loop that starts and ends near Mid-Lothian Mines Park on North Woolridge Road. What fewer people track, including some longtime residents, is that the route itself isn't fixed. It swings on a two-year cycle between two competing cul-de-sacs, and the swing is intentional.
One Street Started It
Sports Backers, the Richmond nonprofit that organizes the run, built its holiday event around a street that was already doing the work. Dawnridge Court earned a reputation for lights years before Sports Backers showed up, enough that regulars now call it "Christmas Corner." The run's 13th annual running landed on December 13, 2025, which puts the founding year at 2013. For most of that history, Dawnridge was simply the course. Runners passed it year after year until Coralview joined the route in 2024.
Coralview Road watched from across the neighborhood and eventually decided to compete. Neighbors there built a synchronized light show tall enough to span the street, elaborate enough that it picked up its own nickname, "Christmas on Coralview."
Why the Route Actually Moves
In 2024, Sports Backers put Coralview on the map for the first time, pulling runners off Dawnridge for a season. Nan Callahan, the organization's communications lead, explained the thinking to WTVR that December:
"We plan to trade off every other year which way the course goes."
The following December, the course swung back to Dawnridge. That's two data points, not a guess: Coralview in 2024, Dawnridge in 2025. If Sports Backers holds to the pattern it announced on the record, the 2026 course should put Coralview back in the spotlight this winter, which means the neighbors who spent last December decorating for a route that skipped their block finally get their turn.
The rotation isn't just about pride. The event caps registration at 5,000 people, and that field sells through every year. A street on the official course absorbs a guaranteed night of five thousand runners and walkers, a costume contest, a Neighborhood Superlative Contest judged block by block, food trucks, and hours of foot traffic past front yards. A street with the same lights but no runners on the route gets to enjoy its own display without the crowd, the parked cars, or the trampled grass. Both versions of that trade have real appeal depending on what a household wants out of December, and Sports Backers built a system that hands each street its turn instead of letting one cul-de-sac carry the event indefinitely.
What the Rotation Means If You're on Either Street
For residents of Dawnridge or Coralview, the two-year cycle is a planning question, not trivia. A year on the course brings a pre-race festival at Mid-Lothian Mines Park from 4 to 6 p.m., with the run itself running 6 to 9 p.m., plus real traffic disruption. Ahead of the December 13, 2025 event, Chesterfield police closed southbound North Woolridge Road at Walton Park Road hours before the run started, closed northbound lanes at Grove Hill Road a few hours after that, and shut most of the subdivision to vehicle traffic from roughly 5 to 9 p.m. A free shuttle ran continuously from off-site parking for anyone who wasn't walking in.
A year off the course means skipping all of that, but also skipping the cameras, the block-party energy, and any shot at the Neighborhood Superlative Contest. Either way, the calendar is worth marking now rather than in November. Registration for the 2026 run opened in late July, and as of this week adult entries run $40, youth entries $30, and the Twilight 1-Mile Kids Run $20, a pricing tier that holds through September 30 before climbing again in October.
Not Everyone Wants to Be the Star
The rotation changes who feels the pressure, and not everyone treats that pressure the same way. On Ashtree Road, longtime resident Virginia Goin built her display around a wooden selfie stop with cutout holes for faces, made for her by neighbor Kate Ray, plus a holly tree topped with a star that Goin herself once fell into while decorating. These days a few neighborhood teenagers handle the star instead. Goin has emailed her street more than once to tell neighbors not to worry if their yard isn't ready, and to say she can find help if anyone needs it.
That instinct, more than the lights themselves, is closer to what actually holds the tradition together. A run that started as one street's private hobby now follows the course rotation Sports Backers described, alternating between the streets every other year.
The Same Night, a Different Street
Walton Park's identity every December depends on which cul-de-sac is carrying the course that year, and that identity resets on a timeline nobody inside the neighborhood controls directly. Dawnridge had 2025. If the pattern holds, Coralview gets 2026. Either way, the run starts and finishes at the same spot on Woolridge Road, the shuttle still runs from the same lots, and somewhere on one of those two streets, a resident is already thinking about what goes on the roof next.
If you're weighing a move to Walton Park, or wondering what a street's holiday reputation might mean for how it shows and sells later in the year, Heather Grubb has spent years working new construction, resales, and everything between across Chesterfield County. Let's Connect and talk through what a neighborhood like this one actually looks like up close, in every month, not just December.
