Running Bear 2014

I discovered the Running Bear Run last summer when I was up here camping at D.H. Day Campground in the national park, just west of Glen Arbor. A Tuesday race is out of the ordinary and thought it was a great way to spend part of my vacation time. I enjoyed running it last year so kept my eye out for it this year.

The race is organized by the Glen Arbor Women's Club and all of the proceeds go towards scholarships for students at Glen Lake Community Schools and towards other community activites. The GAWC puts on a great event, and the the large turn out they get on a Tuesday morning reflects that.

The ladies of the GAWC have this machine well tuned...if you're registering on site then you start by filling out a sheet at this table...

...and head to the table that's to the right of the "preregistered" table. I had preregistered, so it was smooth sailin' for me.

Next I went and bought my shirt. Normally race registrations come with a shirt. In this case, however, the race fee is about half the price of most 5K's (only $15 before July 22/$18 on the day of the race) and you have the option of purchasing a shirt when you arrive. Shirts were $15 adults and the children's shirts were less, although I don't remember the exact price.

Front of the shirt...

...and a neat design on the back.

Every year they have a warm-up 20 minutes before the race begins. It's led by the owner of Lori's Pilates in Glen Arbor, and of course her name is Lori :). I didn't participate but instead took a few photos, then found my "ready spot" at the start.

Here's our start at the corner of Lake and State Streets! This is also where we end...you can see the finish line and schute that they pull out after the race has started.

The course was an out-and-back, taking us down Northwood Drive and offering one water stop after the turn around (I don't always stop for water in a 5K, but with how humid it was this water stop was very welcome!)

And here I am finishing...thanks Bryan!

After finishing, I of course had to go check out the awesome--and delicious!--spread that these ladies provide! The brownies were amazing!

This race is not chip timed, so while we were waiting the GAWC held a raffle with some pretty nice prizes. Here they are calling out numbers in front of Cherry Republic with the help of Running Bear. Cherry Republic is a huge sponsor. You can see a table to the right that holds the prizes for the age group winners--they are all donated by Cherry Republic. A delicious reward if you ask me!

It took a while for the results to be posted because everything is done manually (no chips here!). Our bibs had slips of paper you ripped off, they wrote down your time on the slip, and eventually they staple the slips to some plywood on the side of a truck.

23:07 isn't too bad for me, and only two seconds slower than last year's time.

I got this photo off of the Running Bear Run website. It's a photo of the overall male winner and the 20-29 female age group winner...a husband and wife celebrating their 4th wedding anniversary! They were up north celebrating and found out about the race the day before the event. Pretty neat!

A weekday race was a nice distraction from the daily grind. I'll look forward to running this again next year!