Bruckelaufe Half-Marathon: Race Recap
Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Or more accurately, 3rd place finisher, get a growler.
Saturday, Oct. 5 was the annual Bruckelaufe Half-marathon in Frankenmuth, MI. Bruckelaufe means “bridge race” which is named for the 13 bridges the course takes runners over. Although, I must admit, only about 5 of them would qualify as bridges in my book. The famed Holz Brucke (covered bridge), and a few others.
As always, I had 3 levels of goals. My A goal was to break 2 hours, B goal was to break 2:10 and C goal was to finish. It was a cool 35 degrees at the start so I decided I’d come out a good pace for the A goal or 9:00 minute miles. As I kept that pace consistently for the first half i was gaining confidence that I could keep that up for the full 13.1. The course is mostly flat except a few inclines up a some of the longer bridges over the river. The wind was strong and somehow always in our face no matter what direction we were running. I’m glad I decided to run with ear buds and music from my playlist, something I rarely do. It helped on this course as we were in farmland with no crowds the entire race. I always love listening on shuffle and not knowing what song will play next. Jumping from Dylan to Rolling Stones to Van Morrison to Marvin Gaye to Black Eyed Peas to Talking Heads to The Band to Johnny Cash to jazz and classical and more makes for a great run.
When I finished under 1:57 I was happy but didn’t think I’d place in my age group. After grabbing some chocolate milk, a pretzel and banana I checked my results on one of the laptops set up inside the pavilion near the finish. I was very happy to see I’d finished third in my age group. I was even happier when I saw that the top 3 finisher trophies were actually brown glass growlers. Nice!
Once again, the Frankenmuth Jaycees put on a very organized, fun event.