One by one, Tim Groover flips through some of the hundreds of photographs he’s taken over the last 12 years.

There is a photo of the sorority that swam, biked and ran in memory of their sister who died in a tsunami, one of the pastor who ran in memory of two murdered Virginia Tech students, and several of the father who ran alongside the young man whose life was saved by his daughter’s organ donation.

With each photo, there is a story and Groover, who will celebrate the 13th and final Angels Race Triathlon on Sunday, remembers every one.

“It stopped being for Brittany probably after the first year or two,” he said.

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It was 2002 when Beth and Tim Groover’s daughter Brittany, a student at Jefferson Forest High School, died in a car crash.

The Angels Race came soon after.

Beth and Tim were trying to “keep it together” for Brittany’s two younger sisters, and Brittany’s uncles David and Geb Broman were taking their grief out on the roads biking and running with friend Mick Gunter, who was doing likewise to deal with the loss of his mother.

“The three of them are kind of bull-headed, athlete-type people that want to do something. They came up with the idea,” Tim said.

The Bromans and Gunter asked if the Groovers would let them have a triathlon in honor of Brittany, an event where they and others could come and find a healthy release for their grief. 

Tim remembers telling them they were “nuts.”

“Miraculously, they pulled off that first race,” he said.

There was just a handful of athletes that first year, in 2003. The bike racks were handmade, the finishers timed on stopwatches and the course painted by hand.

Just like that, “we were bitten” and the family started helping coordinate the event the very next year, Tim Groover said. 

***

A decade later, the race was attracting between 400 and 500 athletes and non-athletes alike, along with hundreds of volunteers.

“It got legit and people would come from all over to do this race,” Groover said.

The unique and challenging course dumped hundreds of competitors into a small YMCA pool for a 300-meter swim at 10 second intervals, funneled them to their bikes for a 25K ride and ended with a 5K featuring an uphill run even the most masochistic of athletes would describe as cruel.

After a few years, a second Angels Race began in North Carolina, where Gunter was based. The mission remained unchanged.

“It started out for us as kind of a healing event,” but it quickly turned into being about everyone else, Geb Broman said.

“I think that people have taken advantage of an event that had a mission and purpose behind it,” he said. “They found ways through physical exertion, to hopefully deal with loss. … If we’ve touched a few lives that way, then it’s been a good thing.”

Almost as a second thought, the race generated tens of thousands of dollars.

The Groovers funneled their share into programs Brittany would have loved and Gunter funneled his into education in honor of his mother.

Most of the Brittany Groover Memorial Scholarship funds have gone to programs that provide children in poverty with an opportunity to go to camp and play sports.

“Because Brittany was one who loved to have fun,” Beth Groover said.

***

“When we started it we really didn’t even know if it would come off the first year, so we had no timeline as to how long we were going to do this,” Tim Groover said.

The effort that goes into staging the event is immense, from the permits that must be obtained to the 200-plus volunteers needed to keep athletes on the course. Beth and Tim Groover and Geb Broman repeatedly credit the City of Lynchburg and volunteers for the race’s successes and are grateful no one has been hurt.

“Life takes you to another place,” Tim said. “It’s important to kind of realize when it’s time to close a chapter and maybe go to something else.”

He points out that Brittany’s sisters were 11 and 13 when she died, and now are 24 and 26 years old. One is engaged.

It was the 10th anniversary of The Angels Race that got them thinking, reminding Tim the race could not go on forever.

“We’d rather it go out on top, than sort of fizzle,” he said.

“We just feel like it’s sort of time to thank everyone for what they’ve done, to celebrate what has happened through the race and to just put an exclamation point on it.”

To that end, coordinators said this year’s race will hold true to tradition. 

It will start with the “It’s A Wonderful Life”-inspired ring of a bell and each competitor will be asked to declare the name of the person they race for before being allowed to begin their swim. 

“It’s been incredibly healing for us,” Tim said.

“It does help me personally a little bit because I’d sort of made a little bit of a quiet promise to [Brittany] after she was gone that one of the things that I wanted to try to do was at night when it gets quiet and I’m getting ready to go to sleep I’d talk with her for just a little bit. 

“I’d like for her to think that I might have done something during the day that would have made her proud.”

It was easy to feel that way on the day of the race.

“She would get such a kick out of something like this,” he said.