There's just something about a small-town 5K, especially if you live, race and train in a large city.

Sometimes it is just nice to get away and run a well-produced event, in another city, county or state.

Last Saturday's Bull Run 5K in Belle Plaine, Minnesota - an hour or so to the southwest of Minneapolis fit the bill.

The flat, two-loop course through the Belle Plaine neighborhood was partially shaded by an abundance of trees in the small town of 6,661 that was east and south of the high school and junior high school where the race started and finished.

The race was manually timed (still haven't seen results posted), but when you're running a 30-minute 5K you're not likely to place - and the watch worked just fine.

Didn't see that the course was certified on the USATF website, but it seemed pretty close. (My daughter overheard somebody on the course telling another runner that it had been known to be short.) We started "about .1 from the finish" and those two loops were equidistant with the remaining mileage to the finish line.

However, I had 44 seconds, which means that I would have been running under an 8-minute pace for that last tenth. (Don't think so!)

Nonetheless, it didn't take away from the race and the community atmosphere, which was part of the 58th annual Belle Plaine B-B-Q Days. People had set their lawn chairs up the night before for the parade when we drove into town that morning. And the grand marshal even ran in the race.

There was a spirited kid's race before the start of the 5K - and no overbearing parents that are sometimes seen at some of these distances. Just a lot of encouragement and support. Fantastic!

Course was well-patrolled by Belle Plaine's finest. Drivers in the neighborhood, for the most part, seemed to be patient to the runners.

The course featured a fair number of turns, especially over two loops, and I noticed lots of runners who probably ran 3.2 because they weren't running the tangents between turns.

Race day registration was $20, I believe, and you got a nice T-shirt. Great deal when lots of places race day registration is $25, $30 or more for a 5K.

And the people that I was around were as friendly as could be.

If you're in the area on vacation, like we were, this would be a wise choice to run a race in a great, smaller community with some cooler summertime temperatures.