The Bulldog Jog, the Weather Machine, and the Return of the Body
A Preview of the 2025 Butler Bulldog Jog 5K and Indy Runners 10K. Presented by Indy Runners and Walkers.
Lace up. The Butler Bulldog Jog is back—and so is spring, sort of. On Saturday, April 12, 2025, at 8:00am (sharp!), the Bulldog Jog 5K and Indy Runners 10K will commence from Butler University’s beautiful campus on the north side of Indianapolis. The patented Weather Machine (more on this magical device below) says sunny skies and temps in the upper fifties to lower sixties. Meet at the Butler University Health & Recreation Complex (HRC) next to Hinkle Fieldhouse. Just follow the sound of upbeat, early 2010s Top 40 and look for neon-clad runners nervously chatting and milling around the registration tent. Speaking of, registration is still open online, though the price increases on April 10. Come for the run, stay for the fellowship, get brunch afterwards, support local businesses, walk a dawg, and leave with stories (and maybe even a medal). Go Dawgs!
In some ways, the early spring 5K in the Midwest is an annual rite of passage. Or maybe a proof of life event, depending on how bad things got that winter.
Remember those old cartoons where they would show the natural world waking up to spring? Daffodils and mushrooms doing calisthenics? Woodland creatures scurrying about? Trees stretching and yawning? No, I’m not describing an acid flashback. (You can read some of my other work if that’s what you’re looking for.) I’m trying to describe what the Bulldog Jog represents to me. It’s the first bona fide spring race of the year, and a chance to shake off that winter hangover on a meandering, mixed-terrain course through some of Indy’s loveliest environs.
Okay, I’ve spent the better part of the last half hour scouring the depths of the internet trying in vain to find the precise cartoon I’m thinking of. I know it uses “Morning Mood” by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, but I can’t seem to find the clip I am thinking of, and I simply can’t take any more time out of the writing of this race preview to find it because this has to get published today. If you know the cartoon I am thinking of—and it’s not the Disney one above, though this one scratches the itch for now—please drop a comment.
Anyway, back to the image of waking up to spring.
As this 21st century progresses, the more I come to suspect that spring races like the Bulldog Jog exist, in no small measure, to help us remember we have bodies. Think about it. Virtually everything else in our culture does its best to unburden us of this fact. DoorDash makes it so you don’t have to get out of bed to eat Taco Bell. Our $900 phones—supercomputers, basically—bring us the news while we’re sitting at a red light. Cars come with heated seats and can even drive themselves.
But then there are days, like this Saturday, when the body reasserts itself in all its corporeal glory. A race that begins with long-sleeve tech Ts and wool beanies gives way by the end to short sleeves and tank tops, maybe even a few bare chests. Some of us get our first real good sweat soak of the season. The Body has returned! With a vengeance.
Because here’s the thing. Winter training sucks, and no amount of group runs, Costco snacks, and camaraderie can really change that basic, existential fact. It’s lonely and cold. Just getting out the door takes incredible fortitude. The body aches from padding around in snow, awaking hours before sunrise, staring down Old Man Winter to grind out yet another 12 miler in the dark. By contrast, the spring race is life giver. Stand jubilant under a sun that finally feels warm, then pant your way up the mild incline where Sunset Lane gives way to 49th Street. A cheerful stranger with a homemade sign shouts "Almost there!"
But he’s thinking: “Hey knucklehead, take off the sweat-soaked knit cap. It’s spring.”
The Butler Bulldog Jog is a spring race—the first of the season, if you want to get technical about it, and it is a body first event. What do I mean by this? A spring 5K isn’t the body waking up, necessarily. It’s the body stepping out. Months of quiet solitary miles, in the bitter cold, in layers that crinkle like take-out bags, finally the training gets to feel like something. Movement becomes celebration; breath syncs with the thawing earth.
Oh right—this is what it feels like to be alive.
In a world saturated with pixelated artifice, a road race is a stubbornly real thing. You can’t fake your way through three-point-one or six-point-two. You have to show up, feet slapping pavement, heart thudding its steady gospel, surrounded by other weirdly hopeful humans chasing the same finish line. Spring races don’t resurrect the body; they reveal that it’s been alive all along. And hey, being here now, physically and communally, is no small thing in 2025.
A brief and meandering history of the Bulldog Jog
Like so many great things—daylight saving time, brunch, the band Phish—the Bulldog Jog has undergone many evolutions. First run in 1993 as a simple on-campus 5K promoting wellness and school spirit, the race has been a fixture of the Butler spring calendar for more than three decades. But its exact format, distance, and organizing committee? That’s a longer, slightly loopier story. (As with most good Indiana institutions, the race has had multiple comebacks, costume changes, and at least one version that existed only virtually.)
Originally launched by Butler’s Department of Recreation (now part of the HRC), the Bulldog Jog enjoyed steady support throughout the '90s and 2000s. Prizes, mascots, and even canine companions have long been part of the race's unique flair. The course typically looped through and around campus, showcasing Butler’s beautiful grounds and acting as a springtime reminder that movement is, in fact, medicine.
By the late 2010s, however, the race had begun to lose momentum. Key organizers within the HRC moved on, and participation dipped. Enter Indy Runners and Walkers. The club had already been hosting its wildly popular and long-running Spring Training Program at Butler since the early 1990s, so the partnership made a certain kind of sense. Both shared a mission to promote fitness, community, and accessible racing. Around 2017–18, conversations began about how to revive and refresh the Bulldog Jog for a new era. The result? A new dual-distance format, new energy, and—unofficially—a Weather Machine.
The first big leap came in 2020, with plans for a 10-mile race added to the traditional 5K. Unfortunately, as we all know, 2020 had other plans. The debut of the 10-miler took place virtually, as pandemic restrictions forced a reimagining of nearly every race calendar on Earth.
In 2021, with cautious optimism and a 55-gallon drum of hand sanitizer, the Bulldog Jog returned in person, though it was just the 5K, and just on campus.
The next year, 2022, saw the most ambitious version yet: a 15K course (that’s 9.3 miles for the imperially minded) weaving through some of Indianapolis’s most scenic spots—Michigan Road, Cold Spring, Riverside Park, and back through Newfields. The 5K remained on campus. Runners loved the longer course, but soon a new complication emerged: construction on the 30th Street bridge over the White River blocked part of the route.
Rather than return to the 10-mile format or fight the city of Indianapolis’s construction schedule (a fool’s errand), organizers pivoted. The 15K was trimmed to a 10K, redesigned to loop through Newfields earlier in the route—and, as it turned out, runners liked it even better. So much so that in 2023, the 10K became the official “longer” course, and the 15K went the way of the VCR: fondly remembered, but retired. (Cue the sad sax solo.)
Through it all, the Bulldog Jog has remained true to its core mission: to promote fitness, wellness, and community through movement, sweat, and the occasional encounter with a startled and very pissed off goose.
The courses: 5K and 10K
So the Bulldog is really two races in one (three if you count the 1-mile Dawg Walk): there’s the 5K (3.1 miles) and the 10K (6.2 miles). The 5K course is intended to be a more traditional road race—paved, mostly flat, and fast. The 5K course traverses Butler’s campus from the HRC southwest to the top of Crown Hill Cemetery and back again.
If you’re picturing a sleepy little jog around campus, think again. The Bulldog Jog is equal parts road race and campus festival. Butler’s campus, which is normally as tranquil and collegial as it gets on a Saturday morning, transforms into a high-energy mix of pep rally and fun-run. The university pulls out all the stops: Butler Blue IV, the school’s famed live bulldog mascot, will be on-site mugging for photos (and probably sneaking treats from adoring fans), and Hink, Butler’s eight-feet-tall costumed bulldog mascot, will be hyping up the crowd with the cheer squad. Yes, there’s even a pep band playing the fight song at 8:00am as we take off, which is a surreal and motivating soundtrack for a run. There’s something uniquely invigorating about doing your pre-race hamstring stretches to the brassy strains of “The Butler War Song.” It’s equal parts inspiring and slightly comical.
Is this a 5K or halftime at a basketball game? Answer: it’s both.
As beautiful as Butler’s campus is, the area just off campus proper is one of my favorite spots in all of Indianapolis. The Central Canal Towpath—a remnant of the city’s failed attempt to forge a connection to early 19th century river trade—offers quiet, tree-shaded stretches where flocks of angry Canadian geese act as unofficial course marshals. Get too close and you’re liable to lose more than just your bib.
Race director and longtime Indy Runners board member Brian Schuetter told me one of his favorite things to witness has been the joyful blend of student energy and running community ethos: "It’s been very satisfying to see the interactions between students and Dawg Walk folks along with Butler Cheer and Hink and having the Pep Band out there supporting us. It’s really been able to keep a Butler feel while welcoming the running community to some of our favorite sections of the City."
So, what is the Weather Machine (TM)?
Well, no one really knows. Some say it’s housed deep in the basement of Hinkle Fieldhouse, a clanking, steam-powered contraption forged from old marching band instruments and fueled by Gatorade powder, old pep band horns, and the collective will of the Indianapolis running community. Others claim it’s just Schuetter in a hoodie, whispering sweet nothings into a Doppler radar and praying for the best. Either way, the machine has been shockingly reliable over the years—producing race-day conditions that range from “crisp spring morning” to “suspiciously perfect.”
It’s snowing at this very moment, as I write this from my office at IU Kokomo. On April 9.
It’s snowing. But I have hope. This year, the Weather Machine appears to be fully operational. Perhaps freshly oiled, or given a firmware update, or finally appeased with the correct offering of mid-tier breakfast burritos.
But even if the unthinkable happens and the Weather Machine craps out first thing Saturday morning, it’ll be alright. There is something profoundly moving about events that ask so little of us and yet offer so much. The Bulldog Jog doesn’t pretend to change the world. It doesn’t raise millions, or draw national media, or feature celebrity runners. But it reminds us, gently and insistently, that we are part of something—a campus, a run club, a community, a city—and that this belonging is enacted not just through words, but through the body: movement, through sweat, through a shared April morning. I’ll be running it again this year. Slowly, probably. I’ll be passed by a teenager, a retiree, and at least one stroller. I’ll wish I’d done more training. I’ll remember, briefly, that I used to be faster. But mostly, I’ll be grateful to be there, in this city I’ve come to enjoy, among people I’ll never know but will recognize again next year.
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Loved this piece! It made me smile and wish I'd registered. Maybe next year?