I've been looking for more fall races to keep me running later into the season, and loved that this race has a flexible completion date through November and early December. I chose to run mine in December, a couple weeks after the Epic Races Turkey Trot and it worked out perfectly!

What's fun about this "virtual" race is that it still has some requirements—your 5k needs to be run in a Michigan State Park (or if you're from out of state, in a state park near you.) This turned into more of an adventure than I realized as the parks I initially had in mind were Metroparks, not technically state parks managed by the DNR/Department of Natural Resources as required by the race. Consequently, I wound up doing some research to find running trails in State Parks near me, and learned quite a bit about our state parks along the way!

In the end, I chose a park I was familiar with from triathlon swim training, and explored a hiking trail I've never tried before. Luckily, the park also allows dogs on a leash, so my pup got to join me in this "race", too. I'm really happy this run pushed me out of my usual running routes to try something new—Rosie and I both loved exploring a new place! We also discovered that trails are a good "equalizer" for us on the run, so I suspect more trail runs are in our future!

I'm preemptively giving the swag 5 stars, as I <3 all the Epic Races swag. :-) I'll get a present in the mail in a couple of weeks with the shirt and medal, so it will be fun to see what they will be! I also love that this particular race supports our state parks, so this race is just a win all the way around!

(P.S. A rating for Aid Stations is required. As there are no aid stations in a virtual run AND I didn't want to ding the race with anything one star, I simply gave it 5. Ditto with the Expo.)