If you live in Walton Park and you've spent every December bracing for a night when your entire subdivision fills with strangers in ugly sweaters, you've been bracing for the wrong scale. The CarMax Tacky Light Run, now heading into its 14th year on Saturday, December 12, 2026, doesn't run through Walton Park. It runs through two of its streets. Which two depends on the year, and the organizers have been open about treating that choice like a rotation rather than a fixed route.
The event started small in 2012 as a way to see the neighborhood's holiday lights on foot. It's grown enough that Sports Backers, the Richmond nonprofit that organizes it, now caps registration at 5,000 people. That's not a neighborhood tradition anymore. That's a managed race with a capacity limit, staged out of Mid-Lothian Mines Park on Woolridge Road, the same 44-acre former coal mine site most Walton Park residents already know for its pond and walking trails.
Two Streets, Not Forty Houses
For years, the run's signature stretch was Dawnridge Court, a cul-de-sac residents nicknamed Christmas Court for how far its homeowners went with lights. In 2024, Sports Backers changed the official course. Instead of turning onto Dawnridge near the 2.5-mile mark, runners and walkers went left onto Coralview Road instead, where a new synchronized light display timed to a holiday radio station had started drawing its own following.
The switch wasn't framed as permanent. Nan Callahan, Sports Backers' communications manager, told a local reporter at the time:
"We plan to trade off every other year which way the course goes."
That framing matters if you live anywhere near either street. By December 2025, coverage previewing that year's run described Dawnridge as "a beloved highlight of the course" again, with Coralview's display credited as having been inspired by it, which tracks with a swap back to Dawnridge for the 13th annual run. If the alternating pattern holds, the 2026 route would return to Coralview. That's a reasonable read of the pattern Sports Backers has described, not a confirmed fact, so anyone on either street should check the official course map before the 12th rather than assume.
If You Don't Live on Dawnridge or Coralview
Here's the part that gets lost in the general "Walton Park lights up for the holidays" framing: most of the subdivision experiences none of this as a road closure. The course starts and finishes on Woolridge Road next to Mines Park, so that stretch and the immediate approach see real traffic for a few hours. The interior streets that aren't part of the featured block, the ones without the synchronized light shows or the cul-de-sac reputation, stay open and largely unaffected. Sports Backers publishes a specific road closure and parking map for the actual course footprint rather than the whole neighborhood, which is worth pulling up if you're trying to figure out whether your own driveway will be fine that evening.
The Night, Hour by Hour
The event actually runs in two separate windows, and conflating them is how people show up at the wrong time:
- Early afternoon, shuttles begin a limited run around 2:15 p.m. for the Twilight 1-Mile Kids Run, a separate race for ages 4 to 12 that finishes under the event's tacky light tunnel with a Santa meet-and-greet and cookies at the staging area.
- 4:00 p.m., the pre-race festival opens at Mid-Lothian Mines Park, with the costume contest and the neighborhood decorations open for browsing before the main race starts.
- 4:00 to 9:00 p.m., continuous shuttle service runs from satellite lots, including Bright Point Community College, straight to the staging area, which is the easier way in if you're hosting out-of-town guests and don't want to deal with parking near the course.
- 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., the main 6k runs through Walton Park's featured street for the year, with the Costume Contest and Neighborhood Superlative Contest playing out along the route as participants and homeowners compete for the tackiest showing.
What the Entry Fee Actually Funds
Registration pricing climbs in tiers as the date approaches, starting with a Christmas-in-July discount and rising through a final window running December 9 to 13. That kind of tiered pricing is standard for races that expect to sell out, and a 5,000-person cap on an event that started as a casual neighborhood walk says something about how far it's traveled from its origins. The proceeds don't stay local in the way you might expect from a Walton Park event. Sports Backers uses race revenue to fund youth programs across the Richmond region, including Kids On The Move and the Active Living Leadership ALL Stars, the same organization behind races like the Monument 10K. A Walton Park porch light display ends up subsidizing youth athletics well outside the subdivision's fence line.
Whether this changes how you plan your December depends on where your house sits. If you're on this year's featured street, expect the DJ, the block party energy, and to be, for one night, the most photographed address in Chesterfield County. If you're two streets over, the run barely touches you beyond a few hours of tighter traffic near Woolridge Road, which is worth building into your evening plans if you're headed out along Midlothian Turnpike that night. Either way, checking the actual course map before the 12th beats finding out from a Waze reroute at 6:15 on race night.
Team Hensley | Team Hensley Real Estate has spent more than two decades learning which streets in neighborhoods like Walton Park carry their own quirks, traditions, and calendars, the kind of detail that never shows up on a listing sheet. If you're curious what else is worth knowing about living in this pocket of Midlothian, our Walton Park neighborhood guide is a good place to start, and we're always happy to answer questions directly. Contact Us.
