Tippy Trail 10- and 5-miler

Running through woods on a warm, humid morning.

I’m used to getting up early on the weekends. Since 2020, I’ve been the Saturday run coordinator for Indy Runners, which basically means I’m up and at ‘em by at least 6:00am—a little earlier in the summer months. I mix Gatorade and carry water and bring large boxes of carbs from Costco. I’ve been doing it for so long now that it has become part of the background noise of my life. (Background noise that I thoroughly enjoy, I want to make that clear.)

But this morning, I had to get up exceptionally early. That’s because I ran my first-ever Tippy Trail race in Winamac, Indiana. It’s a trail race with a 10- and 5-mile option. Both are “out and back” routes, which just means that you go from point A to point B and then back to point A.

I am not a trail runner, either by conditioning or practice. In Indianapolis, where I do 94% of my running, I tend to stay on the pancake-flat Monon or maybe the Cultural Trail downtown, where the only rise in elevation comes from hopping a parking barrier or scaling some outlying bulkhead of interminable road work.

This was a real trail in a state park, with woods and birds and roots and smoldering campfires.

Winamac is pretty much nowheresville, Indiana. Actually, there is a town called "Nowheresville,” but it’s in southern Indiana. (OK, yeah, I made that up.) There are maybe a couple thousand people in Winamac, which is just a tiny little north-central Indiana village. It took me a solid two hours to drive there from Indy, and that’s with virtually zero traffic.

Geographically, Winamac sits on the outskirts of an area of northern Indiana that locals call, for reasons I haven’t quite been able to fully understand, “The Region.” The Region is basically northwestern Indiana from Valparaiso up to where Chicagoland begins. People who grew up in The Region are very proud of this fact, and when two former Region-ites (Regionalists?) meet each other there’s an immediate informational shakedown that happens. (Where are you from? Where did you go to high school?) This goes on for anywhere from 15 or 20 minutes to much, much longer.

So, long story short, I had a great time. My friend Kevin from Indy Runners finished second place overall in the 10-miler, which is amazing. He finished a hare over 1:10 (or 7 minutes per mile).

I finished eighth overall in the 10-miler with a time of 1:24:17, or 8:26 per mile.

And I won what I call the “young(er) old guy age division” (males from 40 to 44 years old). I got a nifty wood-carved finisher’s medal, as you can see from the photo above.

One thing I was thinking as I was finishing the race was how much fun my friend and colleague Jim would have at the Tippy Trail race. I need to mention it to him next time I see him so we can potentially do this race together next year. Jim is much more of an avowed trail runner than I am.

And next year, I’m thinking I might get a hotel.