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dispatch from a northern weekend

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Seeking the snow last weekend, our first stop was my mom’s house – almost 4 hours north, on the west side of the state. Snow was knee-high (conservative estimate). Brandon and I woke up Saturday morning to run the Betsie Bay Frozen 5k, which is one of my favorite events. It hasn’t been run since 2020, before the world shut down. In the olden days I would have posted a full separate race recap with my time but in today’s world, post-50 years old, having survived a pandemic, menopause, teenage kid years, the Orange Menace and his Nazi cohorts attempting to ruin democracy as we know it, and various other life events, just getting out there and running it is enough.

We then drove 2 hours further north, to the village of Walloon Lake, which is most famous for being young Hemingway’s Michigan playground. We found a historical marker, and there’s a statue of him somewhere around, but the wind was blowing fine snow into whiteout conditions everywhere so we gave up looking. Instead, we skied at Boyne Mountain (the kid snowboarded) and enjoyed our perfect little Vrbo. As we get older, my ability to stay in a hotel has decreased significantly. I hate being cheek to jowl with mass humanity, having to either pay for every meal and snack or rely on hotel coffee and crumpled snack bags. Give me an AirBnB or a Vrbo every time. I know they’re wreaking havoc on small communities but selfishly I want exactly what we had this weekend. Which was a cozy cottage on a private lot with a fireplace, hot tub, separate bedrooms for us and the kid, a beautiful living space and kitchen, fully appointed. We cooked, we had good coffee, we had a fire, we watched movies, read books, I knitted, and we had privacy. I threw caution to the wind and ate what I wanted to eat, drank Horny Monk from the Petoskey Brewing Company, and made a fool out of myself on the slopes. (I fell. A lot.) The snow was almost claustrophobic – piled higher than street signs and just continually sifting down. The drifts outside the Vrbo were up to the windows with paths cut into them to access doors and the driveway – if you don’t have a snowplow or a snowblower running constantly, you would have big trouble.

All in all, it was a perfect swift getaway with my two favorite people. The world is hard right now and being away for a bit is a luxury. We don’t have a lot of travel planned for the year, so the times we do have together will be all the more important.

2020 Betsie Bay Frozen 5k Race Recap

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The Betsie Bay Frozen 5k started as a friends-only race one Saturday in February and has grown to 200-250 participants with great raffle prizes and a charitable component. It’s one of my favorite running events because of the small-town feel and the totally unpredictable Northern Michigan weather! This is my third (non-consecutive) year running it; one year was a solid, somewhat calm 28 degrees, one year was almost 50 and sunny, and this year was 21 with a 9-degree wind chill and strong gusts off Lake Michigan. You have to dress appropriately!

Race headquarters is the VFW in downtown Frankfort, a block from the Lake Michigan shore. Once you’ve checked in and gotten your bib and t-shirt (this year day-Glo orange), you get on a schoolbus and they trek you down Main Street, across M22 over the Betsie River, through downtown Elberta and up the bluff to the Lake Michigan overlook. It’s always a fun time to chat up other participants and pet some dogs. Up on the exposed, wintry bluff, you wait for the air horn to signal you to run back to the VFW. The event organizers set a start date of 10AM but anyone who has run it before knows that this is just a vague guideline. It takes a lot of organizing to get 200 people on school buses and this year we shivered on top of that bluff for what felt like a loooong time before the air horn went off at around 10:20. Miss L and my folks were parked in Frankfort along Main Street and kept me updated on what they saw across the bay – “There’s a school bus just sitting there…there’s two buses coming your way….both buses are going up the hill…”

There was a lot of snow on the ground and many runners were wearing Yak Trax, which I don’t have, but despite the steep downhill for the first quarter mile, I didn’t have any real issues with footing. The first mile to M22 felt considerably warmer out of the wind, although it took a bit for my feet to feel like anything other than frozen blocks clomping down the road. M22 had a nice tailwind, but the turn down Main Street in Frankfort meant we picked up the headwind off Lake Michigan again, strong and icy. It took my breath away and my eyes were streaming.The footing was also considerably more treacherous, with deep snow and slush. I passed my folks & Miss L and there were waves all around and I really wanted to just climb in the car with them. But I kept going, took a walk break to catch my breath, and finished.

Watch Time: 33:11, 10:42/ave

Official Time: 33:07, 10:41/ave

Which makes it not only my slowest time in this race, but my slowest time for any 5k in recent memory. I note this, but honestly, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve essentially been off for January and February, due to a sudden vitriolic hatred of the treadmill at work, and I likely won’t start running again regularly until I can get back outside with safe footing and longer, brighter days. So finishing in the time I did and with only one walk break is totally acceptable.

It was a whirlwind weekend for me as I was back in the car Sunday for the long drive back downstate – Miss L gets a couple of additional days up north with my folks as she’s on winter break. We checked out the cold and windy beach, went sweatshirt-shopping at the Interlochen Student Store, and had burgers at Dinghy’s in Frankfort. I would have liked to have stayed longer, but I’m hoarding my vacation for longer visits in the summer and fall. And even a short time in my happy place is time well spent!