A soft chime abruptly woke me up from my half-asleep, dream like state. My legs were stretched out as far as they could go underneath the airplane seat in front of me, and I laid back, head off to the side, facing the aisle. The flight crew announced that we would be landing in about twenty minutes. As I yawned and rubbed my eyes I looked out the small window across the aisle. It was about 6:15 AM local time on Saturday morning, the darkness had disappeared outside, and the rising sun was firing orange light across the sky. My redeye flight from the San Francisco airport to Chicago had been fairly uneventful, but my journey would not be ending here. After we landed I would be jumping into a rental car and driving two and a half hours up to the town of Belleville, Wisconsin. From what I could recall, the only real time I ever spent in Wisconsin was when I used to go up there on weekends to snowboard at Devil's Head and Alpine Valley back when I lived in Chicago. The drive was around two hours, so it was an easy day trip. Based on some research I had done prior to hopping on the plane in San Francisco, Belleville was a town of about 1,800 people and was presumably, by all accounts, your average Midwestern rural town. I would say probably 95% of the time it's a pretty quiet place. It's a small community with a simple way of life, and nothing overly exciting really happens there. Except for this upcoming weekend. From Saturday morning until Sunday evening the Badger Trail Races put on by the Ten Junk Miles podcast based in Chicago were coming to town. This meant that 400 and something runners from all over the country would be pouring into this town of 1,800 people over the weekend. The Badger is a fairly new race, having been created in 2019. The hosts of Ten Junk Miles had spent a lot of time logging miles on the Badger State Trail and loved the community so they said "why not create our own race, right here!" Since then, the races have received overwhelming support from the community. The towns people liked that these folks were coming to visit their area and support their businesses. The positive response from the town as well as runners from the inaugural Badger Trail Races prompted the creation of two more events; the Last Dot Standing 24 hour race in October, and the Sugar Badger Trail Races in May. As a result, Belleville has become somewhat of a tourist attraction within the Ten Junk Miles nation.
Once we touched down in Chicago, I shuffled my way through O'Hare International Airport to the rental car counter. I checked in, got my keys, jumped into the Mitsubishi Outlander I rented, and began the trip north. I made it about thirty minutes outside of Chicago before drowsiness set in. I suck at sleeping on airplanes. It's hard for me to get comfortable and I'm usually in and out of consciousness, rather than fully asleep. I decided it was best to pull off the freeway for a snooze before I wind up in a ditch. A couple of hours later with my energy partially restored, I carried on through the countryside. I crossed over the state line into Wisconsin and the terrain was flat and green with farmland and silos dominating the horizon as far as I could see. I was excited to be here but I missed Sam. Thanks to her hard work with growing her business, she had a lot of new pet sitting gigs lined up, one of them happening this weekend. The Badger Trail Races offered every distance from a 100-mile ultramarathon to a half marathon. Something for every runner, as I like to think of it. Sam surely would have enjoyed running this course. I missed her, but I knew she'd be cheering me on in spirit from back home while I progressed through the fifty miler, which started at 6:00 AM the next morning. After a filling brunch at an IHOP in Janesville, I eventually arrived in Belleville. It was early afternoon and the hundred miler was in full swing. The runners began at 6:00 AM in the town of Orangeville, near the Illinois/Wisconsin border. From there, they would make their way along the Badger State Trail through Belleville, turn around at the aid station at Dot's Tavern, head back to Orangeville, then come back again to the finish line in Belleville. Once I pulled into town I headed for Belleville Community Park which served as the race headquarters and the finish line for all distances. I parked across the street and as I walked through the park I spotted in the distance in front of me the Ten Junk Miles Racing inflatable banner situated next to the park pavilion, which had been transformed into an aid station and packet pick up area. I met Kyla, the wife of Scott Kummer, who was the main host of the podcast. She checked me in and handed me a bag with my race bib and lots of goodies inside. Although Kyla is not a runner herself, she plays a key role in the making the races run smoothly. She does a lot of work behind the scenes like assembling race packets, checking in runners, and overseeing the merchandise shop while being a wonderful support system for Scott and us runners. As I mingled with the spectators and volunteers I recognized a lot of names from the podcast and was having fun putting faces with names. Hundred mile runners passed through the aid station set up in the pavilion which was at about mile thirty-nine. Some looked fresh, others looked beat up, but they were all still moving.
After some time I made my way over to the Hollywood aid station to hang out with the crowd over there. The aid station derived it's name from Holly Lindroth, a co-host of the podcast, who was the aid station captain. Which means that she would spend the entire weekend managing volunteers, sleeping in a trailer here and there, and doing all that she could to ensure that us runners would have a badass time out there. The aid station was nine miles down the trail from Belleville Community Park but thirteen miles away by car. I drove along the country roads through more Wisconsin farmland before entering a residential neighborhood in Monticello. I passed by a few houses and came upon a small factory before the street came to a dead end at the trail. The bustling aid station was set up near the end of the road on the trail side with music playing and lots of provisions including massive bottles of Jeppson's Malort and Fireball which were available to runners if they chose to partake in such shenanigans. After spending more time chatting with people and cheering on runners, I headed up to the town of Verona, ten minutes outside of Belleville to check into my hotel. I was staying at a Super 8 Motel and the room was pretty basic, but I wasn't going to be spending much time in there over the weekend, so I didn't really need much. As long as it was quiet at night, the shower worked, and there were no bed bugs, it was fine by me. It was definitely better than the motel room that Sam and I stayed in earlier in the year while on a road trip, which had holes burned in the bed blanket from cigarettes. I unpacked and took a shower, but I was eager to get back to Belleville and cheer on more runners and hang out at the aid stations. Once I was back in town I popped into J&M Bar on Main street to have some dinner. I wondered if I was going to get some weird looks from the locals because I wasn't from around there, but then I remembered it was race weekend. Other runners were hanging out inside and the locals told us how excited they were for us as I nibbled at my fries and chicken strips. People were stoked about the fact that I had come all the way from California and it took a little longer to get out of there than I had originally planned because I was having fun chatting it up with people inside the bar. Once I made it back to the Hollywood aid station, the party in the middle of nowhere was still in full force and this time around, runners were coming through at both the forty-eight mile mark and the ninety-one mile mark. The course route was an out and back and out again, so runners passed through this aid station three times. The runners who were passing through for a final time had nine miles to go and were going for a seventeen or so hour finish, while some of the runners coming through the forty-eight mile mark were in dire need of help. We had one guy who sat there for a while and was planning to drop because his feet were in such bad shape. Holly fixed them up with some first aid tools, but there's a big psychological factor involved when it comes to moments like these. In real life situations outside of ultra running, it's not realistic to be positive all the time. I've learned the hard way over thirty-five years that it's not healthy to bury negative feelings and minimize physical and emotional pain. Instead of repressing negativity it's better to acknowledge it and find ways to overcome it. But when someone is on the verge of quitting a hundred miler, there's only room for positivity. If they say it's too hot, tell them they just need an ice soak and they'll kick that race's ass. If they're scared because their feet are battered, tell them their feet will recover eventually and they'll be fine. Sometimes the right words at the right time can be what ultimately gets a runner to the finish line.
By the time I left the aid station at 10:30 PM to go back to the hotel for the night, the runner with the battered feet was still sitting in a camping chair at the aid station, so I'm not sure if he was able to go on. As I drove along the pitch black road, I passed an intersection with the trail and saw the beams of headlamps from more runners in the distance making their way to the aid station. During the drive I thought about how fun it was to be the guy cheering on runners at the aid stations instead of running myself, for once. Watching these hundred mile runners chase the finish line, some for the first time, was an inspiring experience and the fact that I was possibly making a difference in their race by giving off good vibes was a powerful tonic. My thoughts were interrupted when I had to abruptly hit the brakes. About a dozen glowing eyes appeared in the road out of nowhere, and when the car came to a stop I saw in the beams of the headlights that I had almost taken out five or six racoons who were just chilling on the pavement, apparently oblivious to the fact that they had come inches away from meeting their destiny on this lonely dark road. I slept surprisingly well that night and was in a dead sleep when my alarm went off at 4:30 AM the next morning. There was a McDonald's right next door to the motel so I went through the drive thru and got some coffee and a couple of sausage burritos, which I wolfed down during the fifteen minute drive to the start line. I arrived just as Scott, who served as the race director, was beginning the pre-race briefing over a PA system. A few hundred mile runners came through the finish line, finishing in around twenty-four hours and after the national anthem was played, us fifty mile runners made our way up to the start line beneath the Ten Junk Miles race banner. I briefly chatted with a few people I had met the day before and at 6:00 AM on the dot the horn went off and we charged across the start line through the park and towards the trail.
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