Before Ash Wednesday, there’s Shrove Tuesday. At Grace, that means pancake races:

As a member of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Ferris helps organize the church’s annual Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper and Races, to be held this Tuesday. Pancake races also are part of the Shrove Tuesday Anglican tradition, one that finds “all my fellow parishioners letting their hair down,” Ferris said.

Racers on the indoor course in the church’s reception hall first sprint to an assortment of British housewife clothes and don aprons, scarves and hats. They dash back to the starting line, where they get a frying pan with a pancake. They then run the course a second time, flipping the pancakes as they go. If the pancake hits the floor, they must start over.

It’s a time to “shake your sillies out — something Anglicans, like conservative Lutherans, are not commonly accustomed to, so it makes for quite an interesting sight,” said Jody Kapp, a church spokeswoman.

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