Saturday, September 30, 2017

Great Pumpkin Runs 2017

The folks who organize The Great Pumpkin Run stay busy in the fall, organizing races in ten different cities this year. I went to two of them, near Lansing and Grand Rapids.
Both events took place at cider orchards. Early in September, I drove over to Uncle John's Cider Mill north of Lansing. And a few weeks later at the end of the month, I went up to Klackle Orchards in Greenville, north of Grand Rapids. It took me an hour or so in each case, since I live south of Grand Rapids.

Both of these cider orchards are popular family outing places even when there's not an event like The Great Pumpkin Run. Play areas for the kids, band stages, cider and donut vending, etc. Fortunately the races happen early in the morning before the rush of regular visitors arrive. I'm glad I signed up for the early race waves, because there were a ton of people showing up even as I was finished and leaving. Traffic was pretty heavy, especially at Klackle.

The race routes went through apple orchards, as you'd expect, as well as pumpkin fields and some forest trails (in the case of Uncle Johns). Part of the Klackle course even went through their corn maze. Probably not going to set any personal records on those courses, but they're a fun change of pace from road routes. My GPS said that both courses were a bit under five kilometers, which was probably intentional as there were a lot of twists and turns, plus the finish lines were uphill from the starting area.
For the adventuresome, runners could sign up to carry a pumpkin around the course. I have enough minor back pain without carrying extra weight while running, thank you, but I saw quite a few other people doing it. One guy had a huge pumpkin that he had balanced on one shoulder as he made his way around the course. Weird, but impressive.

Always nice to have a little cider at the end of a run, and the orchard routes are interesting as long as it's not raining. The Great Pumpkin Run was fun, though I probably won't do two of them in future years. One per year is plenty!