Daily Archives: September 12, 2017

Time to Wine

Busy, busy, busy!  Pretty much the story of my days at the moment.  If I’m not at my day job, I’m working on Halloween decoration projects.  If I’m not doing that I’m getting caught up on yard work and in between all of that, I’m on the road wearing rubber off my running shoes.  Probably not going to let up anytime soon, so might as well embrace it. The toughest part of all of this is a series of 4 half marathon races in something like a month and a half.  Seeing as how I just completed the second of that set two days ago, figured it was prudent to blog about the first one!
13.Wine Half Marathon in Baroda, Michigan August 20th 2017

The first of the half marathons happens to be a new one for me.  At the expo for the Illini Half Marathon back in April, they had placed a card in our packets advertising a 13.Wine run in Baroda, Michigan.  That was quite intriguing having never heard of a wine based race and it really wasn’t that far away – on a normal day looking at about 4 hours worth of driving.  Best of all, Linda was more than willing to take on the 5K if there was wine to be had at the end.  Ended up signing us both up for it (with the advertisement card there was a discount code yeah!).  This would also give a half marathon check in another state – a new life list concept I’ve been kicking around.  So up we went to Michigan to earn us some wine … after an overnight stay at the Joliet Casino campground – opted to cut the drive time a bit so we could pick up the race packets the day before.

13.Wine Half Marathon in Baroda, Michigan August 20th 2017

I must admit, having been spoiled by the like of the Bix7 race and other large events, my expectations were probably way too high.  After winding our way around traffic backups on the main highway between Chicago and Baroda and then fighting closed roads in that little town we finally arrived at the packet pick up located at the starting line of the course.  We drove up and it was just a small pop up tent in the middle of a field (literally in the middle of a field).  It was also a little concerning that there was only one other participant picking up their bibs.   Pretty apparent that this was not going to be a large event as was originally assumed. Again, part of this assumption was fueled by the fact they were advertising at a race in a different state which is fairly large – their marketing campaign at least worked on us.

13.Wine Half Marathon in Baroda, Michigan August 20th 2017

hit the jump to read how the race turned out!

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