The Norsk Run is held every year as part of the Mount Horeb Summer Frolic. It used to be held on the first weekend in June but it has been moved back to the second weekend in June. I appreciated the change because that means that there are now two weeks between the Run Madtown Half Marathon instead of just one. For many years I would either skip the Norsk Run entirely or run the 2 mile course very slowly if I had run in the half marathon on the previous weekend.

The race starts and finishes in Grundahl Park in Mount Horeb. When I first started running the race in 1995 there were two distances, the 10 K run and the 2 mile run. Both runs were “out and back” and are rather hilly to say the least. The first and last mile are pretty bad, especially the last mile, but the worst hill was at the turnaround for the 10 K. There were three slopes to climb and when you got to the top there was nothing but a corn field, and the water stop.

In 2014 the organizers decided to change the 10 K run into a 5 mile run, which eliminated the bad hill at the 10 K turnaround. The 5 mile course is still quite challenging though.