Good Lord! All I wanted to do was go for a simple run, it ended up with everyone in the house going to Hell!
It was a balmy Saturday morning, A great day for a run, so headed up to the “Metro Parks” area, and Hell Creek Ranch. They have an annual 10 mile run and a shorter 8K (4.8 miles, although this seems to be easily confused and often called a 5 Mile race.)
Since it runs through the town (?) of Hell Michigan it is billed as “Run Thru Hell” race. An good attention getter for sure. The town itself seems to consist of one bar, one restaurant and one ice cream and tourist novelty store. You can see real pictures of Hell if you go to the end of the photo album.
Some photos of the race and of Hell Michigan.
There were a couple of long steady climbs getting up and out of the starting area, but then had the luxury of the same going down hill. The course was wide compared to the trail runs, and did not have to dodge a single stump, rock or tree limb! At the turn for the 8K or 10 Mile you did have to dodge the devil though, as he was sending the runners down “the right path to Hell!” and at the same time throwing fire balls at them. (The hot jaw breaker fire balls that is.)
Let’s go over this one more time…. it’s left foot, then left right foot, and then left foot again? Getting sage advice from the coach. Click on the picture and you will see it paid off!!
By the numbers:
a) 4.8 miles.
b) ran at a 9:38 per mile pace, 46:15 total time (0:49:52 total time pre-race guess/calculation based on prior performance)
c) finished 618 out of 986 overall, so finished in the top 63% of all runners.
d) finished 13 out of 25 in my age group.
e) had a great time, which was the real race goal!
The race went great, a new PR for me, and a pretty good pace. After hitting the finish line the race hosts sort of broke down, only two people sitting out cups of water, no bottles, lines being cut by everyone so if you were waiting you went backwards in line! Then only a few dry cookies, and with no water sorta pasty in the mouth. There were plenty of bananas, as least when I went by, not sure if they held out until the 10 mile people got there or not.
You know, I am sorta getting an urge to try a half marathon… but trying to resist until next year. Just barely doing the 5 mile thing right now. Maybe I will try a 10 miler before I make the jump. There should be some coming up yet this year. We’ll see.
Until the devil is evicted from the netherworld,
George