Small race in the middle of nowhere! Ohio's Amish are much different from Pennsylvania's. Still friendly though. Unless you are a local, you'll need a plane ticket, a car rental, and a hotel room. Now, these are the freakout triggers of my existence, but actually it was pretty easy and low stress. This race is on Saturday, so I flew in Thursday and spent Thursday night with a friend, then we both drove down Friday, nice and leisurely.

There's not really any expo, and not a lot to do. There's a winery, but they don't have tours or tastings... I am thinking about reaching out to the race director because they were interested in brainstorming ways to make it more attractive to more people and get the word out, and I have been to enough races in different areas that I have some ideas. Everyone is super friendly. Parking is super easy and close to the pickup and also race start and finish. We got our packets, very well organized, and tons of really cool loot in them! Then we walked around the grounds of Miller's, which has a bakery, foodstuffs, sundries (the cheapest Minnetonkas I've ever seen), and furnishings and baskets. Then checked in at hotel, and came back for the Wheat Ridge School benefit dinner and auction. That was a great move on their part - not sure if it's every year or if it was coincidence, but it was a town thing, not really for the runners. But it was a great way to participate and be involved in and learn about local life and help the community out, too. It was really cool.

Okay so the race. There was a 5k, a half and a full. No time limit. None of the course is closed, so you have to be careful because it's all country roads and there's no sidewalks. They all begin together, but the 5k basically is the first mile, then the last 2.1 miles of the half/full course. The half course is a straight out from Miller's, make a right, do a big loop around past cemetery, schoolhouses, lumberyards, homes, farier, beautiful scenery, before putting you back on the road that is straight shot back to Millers... til you get to just before Mile 12, when you have to make a half mile out and back deviation on a side road, to get to the right mileage. Then you cross the finish line where you were at packet pickup - if you did the half. If you do the full, you loop around the cones in the road, and go back out and do the loop again.

In some ways this is good. After all, you know what's coming and you're not like, OMG when is this gonna END? On the other hand, you know what's coming and you know just how bad that Hill of Death is going to be at mile 19 because you know how bad it was at mile 6. This is a TOUGH course. An incredibly tough course. I've done now 5 marathons, three ultras. Including a marathon and a half in Lancaster County and halfs in Cincinnati, so I know hills and rolling hills. This was by far hardest. It is constant hills, and never leveled out. Some went up the Hill of Death backwards the second time. (I tried but nearly ended up in a ditch.) The course is so hard that you know how in half marathons the first place finishers finish in like an hour? The first place finisher finished in 1:22 here. Cincinnati marathoners who do marathons regularly won't do this race because of the hills.

So hopefully you are still reading. Because... NO TIME LIMIT. And because, this is a race worth doing. Here are some reasons why....
There are personalized signs with YOUR NAME on them, along the route. Different messages. I found mine - it said, "Run Valerie Silensky Run!" Just before the Hill of Death. LOL. The whole county gets behind this race. Someone took the time to write your name and a fun, motivating message on a big poster for you to see when it gets tough. And that's kind of a metaphor.

There were aid and water stations MORE OFTEN than every mile. And every one had water, Gatorade, apples, oranges, Gu, those Welch's fruit gummies, and other random stuff. And people who were there with happy motivating messages, good cheer, and unabashed love and admiration for us.
At the top of the Hill of Death was this Amish man, and some English women, and I was telling everyone as I passed to keep stuff out since I'd be back around again. The second time around, the Amish man was being super encouraging and reminding me that this was fun (I had honestly stopped having fun about mile 17).

And get this. The RD was out on the course, too. She was at every aid station past mile 20 (so, past the Amish guy at Rabers who told me I was having fun), giving me hydration, nourishment and encouragement. When I'd pass, she'd leapfrog me and meet me at the next one. So basically she was meeting me at 5 or 6 aid stations, cheering me on. All the way to the end.

Everyone stayed out. And I was DFL. At the end, there were probably about a dozen or even more people there to cheer me in. They had a finish line. I had a finish time - it was posted with everyone else's. There was food. Including absolutely divine cake and UDF chocolate milk. As much of it as I could drink. My medal. Picture taking. And I placed in my age group (because there weren't that many of us).

The medals are amazing. They are handmade by Amish kids, and they wrote their names and ages and addresses on them. So that we can write them. For me, running is as much about relationships and connecting with people, and this is huge.

But here's the best reason, and the reason this is killing me to miss the Disney Paris half, but I will be back in 2016... So the first marathoners were finishing the marathon, when I wasn't even done with the half. And, I began to panic. I know there's no time limit. They told me this, over and over again. But the weather was threatening (it rained all day even though it wasn't supposed to), I was slower probably than they realized anyone would be... would they pull me? Should I stop at the half point? All the marathoners on the outbound told me I was almost done, thinking I was doing the half, and I'd say, no I'm not... then they'd see the yellow bib and say something encouraging... and I have to say, when they were done and leaving, probably 10-15 of them made a point to drive the course on their way out, and stop where I was, and cheer me on and tell me to keep going - I have NEVER had this happen before. Total strangers who had already done their race, hunt me down and find me to do that for me. So that too, but that's not where i was going with this.

So I hit the end of the 13.1 and my friend and other people who were there cheered me on at the turnaround, and I ran past the man who was at the mile 12 turnoff (the one who directs you to do that turnoff before mile 12), and he yells across the street to me, "you're awesome!" and I just burst into tears. I mean, I felt like crap. I was so embarrassed to be the very last person, and because of me he's gonna have to wait, in the rain, for hours and hours..... And he left his post and ran across the road and gave me this big hug, and I was blubbering and apologizing for making him be out for SO long.... and he said to me, basically, "look, there is nothing I want to do more, today, than to be out here looking out for you, here and seeing you cross that finish line. I want to be out here today. I will be here when you come back around, no matter how long it takes. I think you are incredible." And hours later, when I came back around, he was. He walked that dogleg piece with me, the whole piece. We exchanged names, talked about the race, about his job, about Adams County, where we'd lived in the past, etc. Then he got in his truck and drove to the finish line, and I sort of ran, sort of shuffled, the rest of the way. I'm not describing this well, because it doesn't sound like any big deal, but this was huge. The absolute kindness this random volunteer showed me, not ever for once showing ANY indication that I was any kind of an inconvenience. It kind of embodied the entire experience.

NOTE that I put the wrong URL. The correct one does not have a www. The correct one is http://runwiththeamish.com/