The Cow Chip Classic is held in Prairie du Sac as part of the annual Cow Chip Throw & Festival on Labor Day weekend at Marion Park. I started doing the 5 K race in 2006 and eventually moved over to the 10 K. I really like the course because it crosses over the Wisconsin River on the Highway 60 bridge, and the 10 K loop runs along Lake Wisconsin past the golf course.

The UW Running Club organizes a 15 K race at Warner Park in the Fall. So it is cleverly names the Fall 15 K. It’s the only 15 K race in the area, and it’s an interesting distance to run. I started running this in 2000, it was kind of the big race at the end of my running year when I started. Of course in retrospect, it was really my gateway distance to running half marathons – if I could do 15 K, it wasn’t much of a stretch to get to 21.1 K.

I did my first half marathon in the Spring of 2003, so I continued my fall tradition of doing the Fall 15 K for a few more years. But eventually I had other races in the fall, and then started doing a fall half marathon, so I stopped running the Fall 15 K.

But a few years ago, I decided to start running it again, mainly because my fall half marathon training group insists on doing a 12 mile run before the taper begins. I prefer to run a slightly shorter distance that close to race day. The 15 K is perfect for this. I really don’t treat it as a race, but more of a supported training run. It’s a fun course to run and the race is very well organized and I enjoy doing it.

The Waunafest Run is part of the annual Waunafest celebration in Waunakee. The race is typically run on the last Saturday of July. I’ve been running in the race since 1999 and there have been some changes over the years. Originally the shorter run was just a loop around the downtown and high school area, starting and ending in Village Park. The loop was approximately 3.5 miles long, hence the odd distance for the race. The race course and distance could vary from year to year because of road construction, so it is hard to compare one year’s result with another year’s.

In 2008 the organizers decided to run a standard 5 K race. The course is pretty much the same from one year to another; the start may shift a bit if there is road construction on the course, but that’s about it. At some point they also decided to have a longer race. I’m not sure when the 10 mile race was first run, but I’ve only done it once. It’s a difficult course because it is fairly boring – it winds through the many cookie-cutter subdivisions that have popped up as Waunakee has grown. And the course does change from year to year as well.

One of the things that I love about this race is that the T-shirt remains pretty much the same form year to year, only the colors change. So it’s kind of a cool tradition. The other thing that I love about the 5 K course is that the course is not marked in miles, it’s marked at the kilometer points. This is the only 5 K that I’ve ever run where the kilometers are marked! It’s kind of cool because I have to redo all of my mental calculations for my pace because the miles are not marked.

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.

I ran my first marathon on Sunday November 13, 2016. It had been my goal to run a full marathon before I turned 60, so I made it with several months to spare. I would like to do another marathon someday, so I thought I would include marathons in my race results series of posts.

I ran in the Madison Mini Marathon (half marathon) on August 20, 2016. It was raining at the start so I wore my lucky rain hat – thankfully it wasn’t raining too hard, so I wound up wearing my hat at times and carrying it at other times.

This was my 14th half marathon and it is the only one without pictures. Instead of having photographers along the course, there were unmanned video cameras that captured video at the start, finish and at the 5 and 10 mile points – these were all places in which there were timing mats so it was fairly easy for the company to produce an automated video from the clips near the time when I crossed the mats. The video is not bad, but I wish I had some photos as well.

In the video, I’m wearing a light blue shirt and gray running shorts and I’m either wearing or carrying a light blue and white cap.

I started running the Shamrock Shuffle in 2006. Back then the start and finish were located at the Monona Terrace. The course was out and back, with the 10 K turn around in Olbrich Park. I loved the 10 K course! But the infrastructure at Monona Terrace just was not able to support the race as it grew, so in 2008 the race was moved to State Street, and the courses ran west through the campus with the 10 K turn around now in Shorewood Hills near the UW Hospital. The race was originally staged out of the Overture Center, but in recent years it moved to the Orpheum Theater and now to the area around State Street Brats.

In 2008 the start was cold, below 25 degrees, and this remains the coldest race I’ve ever run in shorts. I also had the middle finger of my right hand taped from a tendon injury, so it looked like I was flipping everybody off along the course. Apparently there is video of me crossing the finish line in my Wisconsin sweatshirt with my taped finger form one of the local TV stations, but I’ve never seen it.

The Middleton Good Neighbor Festival is held every year on the weekend before Labor Day. Starting in 2004 a run / walk has been offered as part of the festivities on Saturday morning. In 2004 it was more of a trail run: we started near the high school and ran on the trail along the Pheasant Branch Creek. It was a 3 mile out and back course.

The next year the run moved to a new route, starting and ending at Capital Brewery, which made the logistics much easier for the organizers. The new course length was 5 K. The course was mostly on city streets, though it follows parts of the trails around Tiedeman’s Pond and Stricker’s Pond. While it is fairly flat in the first two miles, the course does go up the big hill to Quarry park (and back down!) in the last mile.

The course has varied slightly over the years due to road construction, and one year, due to high water in Tiedeman Pond which submerged part of the trail. In 2014 the race started and ended in Firemen’s Park because of road construction on Terrace Avenue near the brewery. This new course was used again in 2015, though the start was moved because the course was somewhat short in 2014. The new course was used again in 2016, so it appears that the change is permanent. So we no longer “replenish fluids” at the brewery, but now we gather in the Youth Hockey / Capital Brewery beer tent after the race.

In 2018 the 5 K course had to be changed due to damage to the Pheasant Branch trail and pedestrian bridges from the Great Flood of August 2018. I actually like the new course better mainly because it goes through a neighborhood that I used to live in. The change has become permanent; the same course was used in 2019 and 2021, and a slightly modified version was used for the virtual race in 2020.

Middleton GNF Run Results

The Lodi Library Run is a 5 K race which is held in during with Susie the Duck days in Lodi which is typically the second weekend in August. The race begins and ends at the elementary school (the old high school) on the east side of town, just off Highway 60.

I ran the Library Run for the first time in 1996, but I don’t have a record of my time for either 1996 or 1997. The most memorable race was in 1998. I ran along with then Governor Tommy Thompson. He was running for re-election and a large number of young people in white “Team Tommy” shirts ran with him. In fact one of his campaign commercials features the governor running on the road through the cornfield just before the first water stop on the course.

This is one of my favorite races because it is a small town race for a good cause. It is very well organized and there is only one big hill on the course. It’s in the first mile, but then it’s downhill or pretty flat for the rest of the race.

The course is supposedly a 5 K, though I suspect that it might be slightly short. There were a few years when the course had to be slightly modified due to road construction; this would be back around 2001 or 2002 I think.

Lodi Library Run Results

The Crazylegs Classic is a benefit for the UW Athletic department – an organization which really doesn’t need the money these days. This is not one of my favorite races: the course can be very crowded and there is only one water stop, so it is hard to run a good race. And the T-shirt tends to be kind of ugly. But I try to run it every year because it was my first organized race and I kind of enjoy it as an event.

The 1993 Crazylegs Classic was the first race that I ever ran in – I made a lot of mistakes in training for the run, and made a few on race day as well. I still remember that first race because Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson also ran in the race and I saw him at several points along the course.

I’ve run in the Crazylegs almost every year since then. I’ve missed only two races over the years. In 2006 I missed the race because I had surgery the previous week, and in 2011 I didn’t run because I was recovering from a knee injury. And in 2020 the race was canceled because of Covid-19. The 2021 race was a virtual race, but things were back to normal in 2022.

The race has changed a bit over the years. The course has been tweaked several times, and there have been years where road construction has caused major detours form the established route. The course has been more or less fixed since 2003 when the race went from being 5 miles to 8 kilometers. Not sure why they made this change – the difference comes out to be about 50 yards, so it’s insignificant. The course was modified again in 2019 to start at the Library Mall instead of the Capitol Square.

The biggest change was in 2006 when the wave start was introduced. This has made the event much safer for all of the participants. The one unfortunate side effect is that by the time that my wave reaches the start line, the winner has already crossed the finish line. But in recent years they’ve kind of backed away from the wave start, which does lead to crowded conditions in the first mile or so.

Crazylegs Results