Rural Route: 2010 Morse Mini

The 2nd Beck’s Hybrids Morse Mini was run in Arcadia and Cicero, Indiana on September 4th, 2010.

The coolest thing about this half marathon, besides the freaky 50s starting temperature and fresh breezes, is the logo.  A sans-serif lower-case-m-with-two-extra humps, blue and orange in a rounded square, it is crisp and modern.  Everything else about this race is a throwback to earlier times, when skinny guys in bad shoes, short-shorts,  and damp polyester braved the streets in search of the finish line with only a few sips of water along the way.

I really, really want to like this race.  It features a lovely route, all straight roads, far vistas, right angles, and tidy corners.  Look left: soybeans.  Look right: corn.  Then change it up: corn on the left and soybeans on the right.  Sometimes corn on both sides.  It is a limited, restful palette of green, blue, and brown, a fantastic respite from my usual city and suburban streets and school tracks.  The enthusiastic water-stop volunteers probably outnumbered the runners.  The course was very well marked: mile signs were substantial, impervious to the wind, and featured ears of corn.  The authorities did an excellent job of keeping cars away from the runners.

There were some chuckles.  The field was optimistically capped at 5,000 — for a race that drew barely more than 200.  Directional arrows appeared on the roads in places where there was absolutely no doubt that the correct route was straight ahead.  The title sponsor couldn’t control the route: roadside signs for rival seed-corn companies sprouted in the fields.  And the porta-potties were pink — from a distance they looked like giant strawberry Twinkies — a jarring color in that landscape.

But the negatives:

I ran this race last year (the “inagural” (sic) event), and vowed not to do it again because the organizers didn’t ask for feedback when they clearly really, really needed it.  There were some improvements over last year — tech shirt, finishers’ medals, if you care about that sort of thing — but I was lured by the promise of unseasonably cool temperatures, so it’s all my fault that I came to run even knowing what the drawbacks would be.

• The water stops were about two miles apart, and featured the most watered-down Gatorade I’ve ever tasted.  The volunteers were so focused on making noise and cheering for every runner they actually forgot to offer water to those coming through.  Once I had to break through a phalanx of volunteers to grab a cup off the table myself, and I was the only runner there.  Two miles between stops would be too far on a day with typical Labor Day weekend weather, imho.
• A substantial section of the race is on pavement covered with crushed limestone.  Like I said, I knew what I was getting into.
• The is no crowd support outside of the water stops, with the exception of the woman in front of the bait shop cheering us on.
• No clocks on the course.  No one at mile 1 with a stopwatch.
• The clock at the finish line wasn’t working.
• At the finish line: an apple, a banana, a cookie.  Water.  That’s it?  No swag in the goodie bag, either.
• There were finishers medals this year (there was a lot of “I’ll never do this one again” complaining last year because there were no medals), but they had no date, the ribbon was orange and black and so didn’t match the logo or the medal (gray and orange), and the same medals were given to 5K finishers, so there was grumbling about them being less than special.
• There was no awards ceremony.  Age-group winners were supposed to somehow divine that they should stop by a table and pick up a medal.  But results weren’t posted.  It was clear that a substantial number of people left without their medals.
• There didn’t seem to be any prizes, or any random prizes.
• No recycling in the finish line area.
• I got the impression that we were seen as running dollar signs.  The cause is a worthy one — the Hamilton Heights High School athletic department — but they have to spend SOME of that entry fee on the runners.

Wildlife Report:

Mile 1: Fresh raccoon roadkill

Mile 2: 2 dead squirrels, and guys loading aromatic fertilizer or compost or manure (I am a city girl)  into a truck.  Aromatic is a generous euphemism.

Mile 3: Crows in a pretty but treeless cemetery, a Jaguar

Mile 4: The sounds of a cheer squad more than a mile away

Mile 5: The cheer squad

Mile 6: Three dead shrews within 30 feet of each other

Mile 7: Birds on a wire

Mile 8: A dog being walked on a leash (!)

Mile 9: Dogs in yards

Mile 10: Wind rustling the leaves

Mile 11: Crickets

Mile 12: The slap-slap of my footfalls and ponytail, getting a little tired

Mile 13: Cars — hadn’t heard them for miles

Mile 14: Finish line crowd

As for me, this was meant to be a training run.  I needed to go 12 miles this weekend, but 13.1 while pushing the pace a little seemed like a good idea.  I went out too fast, and so slowed down after a couple of miles, but was never really punished for the earlier fast pace and had negative splits from there.  It was a test, as I knew it would be: I ran completely alone after the second mile, just me and my thoughts tooling up and down the lanes.   It was my 6th-best half (of 26), more than 3 minutes faster than last year.  I wasn’t first, I wasn’t last, but I don’t know where I finished because the results still aren’t posted.

So, no modern hoopla, no course entertainment, barely any refreshments — an old-fashioned race.  For the record, I did not see a single cow.  But if I ever have a need for a large quantity of Roundup-ready seed corn, Beck’s will be my go-to source.

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Tags: circle city, half marathon, indianapolis running, Mini Marathon, Morse Mini, running