The Great Cow Harbor 10K Run returns to Northport on Saturday, September 19, and, as has become the norm, it sold out well before race day arrived. That kind of demand is a long way from where the race started: as one local businessman's hunch that his hometown's hills and harbor views would make for a good morning run.

That businessman was John Rakucewicz, an avid runner who conceived the race in 1977, betting that Northport's landscape, the harbor, the hills, the historic downtown, could carry a road race the way it already carried postcards. He paired it with the Grand Old-Fashioned Cow Harbor Day Parade, a local tradition that had started a few years earlier in 1973, folding a brand-new footrace into an already-established community weekend. More than 1,000 runners showed up for that first race, enough to prove the idea worked and turn it into an annual fixture almost immediately.

The race's name reaches back even further than 1977, to the colonial era, when English settlers grazed cattle on the pastures surrounding the harbor and the area became known as Great Cow Harbour. That name stuck for roughly two centuries before the village was officially renamed Northport in 1837, but Rakucewicz's race revived it, giving Long Islanders a modern reason to say "Cow Harbor" out loud again nearly a century and a half after the town itself had moved on.

Almost fifty years on, the Great Cow Harbor 10K has grown into one of the more respected road races in the country, recognized by Runner's World as one of the top 100 races in the United States and praised by New England Runner for delivering a "big race atmosphere in a small town on the Island." The event now offers both the full 10K, capped at 5,000 runners, and a shorter 2K Fun Run/Walk capped at 750 participants, giving families and casual walkers a way into the same weekend that draws serious competitive runners from across the region.

The race has also held onto something else from its early, small-town roots: a genuine commitment to giving back. Operating as a registered nonprofit, the Great Cow Harbor 10K funnels its proceeds toward Special Olympics and a roster of local organizations, including the Northwell Health Foundation, the Ecumenical Lay Council Food Pantry, Save the Sound, the Northport American Legion Post 694, and the Lewis Oliver Farm Sanctuary. It is a road race that still, in some real sense, runs on the same community-first logic that got it started in the first place.

Runners who missed registration before this year's sellout can still add their names to a waitlist through the race's official site, cowharborrace.com, for a shot at a bib. For everyone else, there is always next September, and the reasonably safe bet that a race built on a hunch about hills and harbor views will still be filling up fast.