Autumn Drive to Grand Rapids

Maple, oak, birch and poplar leaves were brilliant on the weekend of October 28, and the Grand Rapids Marathon... These maples decorated the lawn along the street where the marathon started and finished.

Autumn color cheered our drive on Friday across Wisconsin on HWY29. Making the drive over in 2 days, we stayed in Mackinaw City on Friday night. Saturday morning we made the rest of the 14 hour drive.

Our return trip through lower Michigan was especially enjoyable, as the sun was behind us, lighting up the leaves from Grand Rapids ....


... to the Mackinac Bridge.

Big Rock Point in the Upper Peninsula

Northernmost point of Lake Michigan.

So we sure did get our fall color drive, and it was magnificent.

Oct 28: Grand Rapids (MI) Marathon ... was Grand !

What a difference 3 weeks makes! In Chicago we wore the minimum of race clothes to the starting line.
In Grand Rapids we came out of our motel to find our car covered with frost.
Hover over pictures for captions, click on pictues to enlarge them.
Instead of the usual round numbers such as 4 hours, 4 1/2 hours, etc. they organized pace teams to match famous people's actual marathon finish times, such as Oprah, Will Farrell, P. Diddy and Dubya. Here the teams are posing on the stairs inside the Y. Fresh and energizing was the weather; yes, that's frost on the tall grasses.
Just 2 days after the time the MOON is nearest the earth in all the year.
We like to drive the race course on the day before a marathon, but in Grand Rapids the course turned into tails which we couldn't drive.. as shown here. The real beauty of the course was to be discovered the next day in the running. Here, at the end of October, the colors were absolutely spectacular. Morning fog still wrapped Millenium Park as we ran. Running trails along the river were a joy to run. A pleasant tunnel of over-arching trees. And all along the way, the volunteers were glorious... with water, Gatorade, Oreo cookies, bananas, gummy bears... all this ON THE RACE COURSE! We have to say they even said,"Can we get you ANYTHING??" at water stations ... until we got to the last 2 ... and they were totally closed down ... by maybe 6 hours (?) We were grateful to see faithful Runner Don coming to meet us, having finished the marathon himself. When Sweet Pea saw this picture later, she said, isn't that on Gateway? And it does look like the trail here in Minnesota where we do a lot of our training.
Oh yea! The finish! And there, as promised, we were greeted by Race Director Don, even when we finished.

Runner Lady in Pink

That's Vickie: ..... the one in pink!

We had planned for many months to do Chicago Marathon on the first weekend in October and Grand Rapids Michigan Marathon on the last weekend in October. Driving home from Chicago we were eagerly anticipating the cooler run in Michigan.
When we arrived at home Don checked on the ferries across Lake Michigan and discovered that the ferries shut down mid-October. Much as we love ferries, the thought of late autumn storms on the Great Lakes ... remember the Edmund Fitzerald that sank to the bottom of Lake Superior? ... was sobering anyway.
But driving around Lake Michigan, either north to the Straits of Machinac or around the south end through Chicago seemed too huge.

Enter Vickie, the cheerful and welcoming Lady in Pink, with all sorts of encouragement to make the trip.

Vickie posted delightful pictures of the marathon and her city.
Vickie's marathon course pictures are available by clicking here:

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

.. on her blog: Running and Tri-ing in River City

Grand Rapids Michigan Marathon

On Sunday we 3 got our finisher's medals at the beautiful Grand Rapids Marathon. The volunteers were super, and they didn't run out of water! And of course we had a great time.