2009 Fallsburg Marathon

The covered bridges reminded me of my favorite

cross country course in high school - Rim Rock Farm

at KU - but this course was about 23.1 miles longer

10. Fallsburg Marathon – Lowell, Mich. – Aug. 15, 2009

Hills. Heat. Humidity. A section of sand. What could be better in the middle of August?

This race really intrigued me from the start. I read about covered bridges breaking up what was described as a highly difficult course. Yet, everybody seemed to love it. And I was looking for a  long training run that weekend. I didn’t sign up until the Monday before, when I found out I could get a flight with frequent flier miles, as well as a Tigers/Royals ticket in Detroit the night of the race (thanks to my friend and former coworker Jacqueline Repp).

So I flew into Detroit on Friday morning and jumped in a rental car for the drive across Michigan. This was my first race done entirely solo, giving me quite a bit of freedom. I checked into a hotel in Grand Rapids and relaxed for a few hours before going to an Italian restaurant. Ever since the Las Vegas Marathon, I had started drinking two beers the night before a race. My friend Jim Lynch, who has run all 50 states plus about 30 others, suggested it. Knowing Jim, there was no rationale behind it, but it didn’t seem to hurt anything. After dinner, I stopped at a grocery store and picked up a couple of bottles, and went back to my hotel room to watch the Royals on television.

The course is pretty much all hills

(this photo and the one above borrowed

from a good blog about the 2007 race
that helped convince me to run it).

The Fallsburg Marathon starts in Fallasburg Park near Lowell, which is about 15 minutes from Grand Rapids. I don’t really understand why the race is spelled differently from the park, but I also figured it didn’t matter. There were only about 100 registered runners, so there was no need for an expo. I parked within 200 feet for the start/finish area, and everyone’s goody bag was lined up on picnic tables. Registration was only about $45, and there is no way they made any money. Every runner got a T-shirt and hoodie just for signing up, and a medal and finisher’s towel at the end. I especially liked the sweatshirt, which had a T-rex and “Old Farts Running Club Fallsburg Marathon” printed on it.

The race also included a half marathon and 5K, and everyone ran together at the start, although those races were also intimate. The first half of the race was all on roads. Since we were in the middle of nowhere, the roads were all open, but there were very few cars out there, aside from the occasional friend/family member of a runner out there to cheer. In fact, we were so far out in the sticks that my GPS watch didn’t connect to the satellites until the 21^st mile.

The runners were very friendly in this one, which is something that seems even more common in smaller races. I ran with one guy who told me to look for his wife along the stretch from miles 20-23, because she was running the half but was planning to support the full marathon runners, including her husband. The course was well designed for a small race, as we passed the same aid station every 3-5 miles.

Most of the second half of the race is on trails

At the halfway point, the course turned from roads to trails, and that’s when it got interesting. It started on a single-track, lined with poison ivy. The good news is that it was through the woods, so it was very well shaded as the heat was rising. There were some decent hills in the first half, but they really kicked in during the second half. In probably the strangest stretch of any race I’ve run, we went 2-3 miles on a trail of sand directly below power lines. I’m talking serious sand. It was like running on the beach. And at the end of the stretch was the steepest hill on the course. It was sand, too. I tried to run up it and realized that every step made me lose as much ground as I was gaining, so I walked it (at the end of the race, I overheard the winner ask if anyone actually ran that hill). That was also the longest stretch in the race without an aid station. The organizers suggested carrying water, but of course I’m not smart enough to follow directions. Fortunately, a fellow runner was kind enough to offer me some, which really helped me. We continued through the woods and ran through a couple of gigantic mud puddles. I slowed down to see if there was a way around it but decided I might as well go through it, nearly losing my right shoe in the process.

At the 20^th mile, we turned back onto the country roads and groaned when I realized the shade was pretty much out of sight and the hills ahead of me looked like a roller coaster. Just as I was starting to get frustrated, a van pulled up and asked if I needed anything. I realized it was the wife of the guy I was running with earlier. I asked what she had, and she popped open the back of her van. She had everything any runner could possibly want – water, Gatorade, popsicles, pretzels, candy, fruit and a bunch of other options. I took some Gatorade and fruit with deep, deep appreciation and kept chugging.

After the final aid station at Mile 23, we turned onto the final trail section. I struggled through more hills, but my fellow runners kept me motivated. I passed a guy that I recognized from Runner’s World. It was Larry Macon, and I asked him how many marathons that one made. He said something like 607, which was nice because it gave my slowly deteriorating brain some math to do. It was roughly a marathon per week for 11.5 years. Unbelievable.

We ran along a river with about a mile to go, and as I was gazing at the peaceful water, I hit a tree root and rolled my ankle. My race was over – had been since the hills and heat started to eat me up – but I was going to finish. I limped the final mile and up one final hill to the finish line (there was no way this challenging race was going to end any other way). By the time we crossed the line, the grills were already fired up with burgers and hot dogs, and we all kicked back for a while.

Overall, it was the hardest race I’ve run. It was the slowest I’d run at that point, by far: 4:38. But I loved it. All of us knew what we were getting into. It was a challenge, but the entire race was very well organized, and everyone knew they had accomplished something special at the end.

I've tried to convince every runner I know to try this race, and nobody has taken me up on it. There's only one sentence I have for it. I absolutely loved this race.