Our Third Annual Shiver in the River!

With apologies, we wanted to provide a bit of a recap of Shiver in the River. We’ve been poring over results and looking through photos and gathering feedback, but here you go:

What began three years ago as a crazy idea has truly become an amazing event, and we are humbled by your response and the support you’ve given us. Our Third Annual Shiver in the River was indeed our best yet, and helped us to raise much needed funds to help us help you to keep Virginia beautiful.

First, our Community Clean-Up. This is perhaps the most important part of Shiver in the River, as it gets to the heart of our mission. 488 people went around the City of Richmond, including Shockoe Bottom, Tredegar, Belle Isle, North Bank, Mayo Bridge, Manchester – Flood Wall, Hull Street, and Manchester climbing wall area south of the Potterfield Bridge. They gathered over a ton of trash and recyclables.

The 5K Walk/Run – We added this component last year, and it’s clearly become a crowd favorite. 535 registered, and enjoyed a course starting and finishing at Historic Tredegar (part of our National Parks System), traveling through Brown’s Island, the Canal Walk, the Flood Wall, and across the new Potterfield Bridge. This bridge was named for Tyler Potterfield, and it’s amazing. It connects the business district of Richmond on the North bank of the James River to historic Manchester on the South bank. The steel design gives you fantastic views of the river and rapids, and you feel like you’re walking on water. Potterfield was also a pivotal player in expanding Richmond’s appreciation of our outdoor spaces. Anyway, there were serious racers, walkers, dogs, and families with strollers enjoying the views and sunshine on that January afternoon. Follow this link, scroll down on “2017” to Shiver, and see how your friends and family did.

The highlight of the day is always the James River Jump. Last year, we were coming off of a pretty decent snowstorm, and temperatures stayed in the lower 40’s. The river that day was running a brisk 36 degrees. We did better this year with water temps around 46! This year, 183 brave souls dipped and splashed into the chilly James. This was a fun and exciting opportunity to see and enjoy the James from a new and unique perspective. Knowing the riverbanks and surrounding areas had just been cleaned by volunteers, participants leapt in and splashed with abandon and beaming smiles!

In striving to make this what it’s become – Central Virginia’s Coolest Winter Festival – we celebrated the Clean-Up, 5K, and Jump with a Winter Festival that included food trucks, beverages, live music, heated tents, and a lot of fun. In addition to all of those who volunteered or participated, a huge number of folks came just to be spectators and enjoy the day. As always, we worked with the City of Richmond to use the recycling carts and cigarette urns that we donated a few years ago for use in all City festival events. We also provided composting bins, all to keep our impact as low a possible!

Over 100 volunteers worked behind the scenes to help us pull all of this off. The photos in the gallery below came from Dave Parrish Photography, and our Shiver in the River video was provided by Creative Dog Media. You can see the full gallery of the work of Dave’s team here and here. All told, we received over $100,000 in in-kind services and raised $79,000 to help Keep Virginia Beautiful.

Thanks to our Diamond Sponsors: 103.7 Play, Comcast Spotlight, Richmond Magazine, Rocket Pop Media.

And to our Esteemed Sponsors:  Capital One, CBS 6, Cobb Technologies, Dominion Due Diligence Group, Dominion Resources, Michael & Son Services, Party Perfect, Richmond Family Magazine, Summit Media, Virginia Tourism, Virginia Living Magazine, Walmart.

Plus the 60 companies and organizations that were Supporting and Gratitude Sponsors! No amount of support or generosity was too small! See all of their names here.

Thank you all again for your support and for making this such an amazing day!