Runners congregate near Millersburg at the finish of "Tommy Toyato," a legendary passage through the wilds, the3 final leg of day one in the 2005 Great Lakes Relay. Many already knew their teams would get two-hour penalties for bringing autors over restricted trails along the leg. The Snot Rockets drove around by approved trails while Waterboiler steamed along the difficult ways of "Tommy."
Friday, July 15, 11:51 a.m., Montmorency County; nearest town, Atlanta. Mostly sunny and heating up. Tawas Point on Lake Huron and Point Betsy on Lake Michigan boast two of the state's most famous lighthouses. As the crow flies, fewer than 150 miles separate the landmarks. A tourist, using the lights as beacons, could cross by car from one landmark to the other in a morning or an afternoon.

Not so for runners.

The 65 teams in the 2005 Great Lakes Relay, a fund-raiser for Michigan Special Olympics, started the labor of crossing from Tawas Point to the neighborhood of Point Betsy today at 6 a.m. from Glennie in the Huron National Forest.

Team Nasty Boys, singing about as competently as they run, sent off the first leg with a rendition of "God Bless America." The runners tended northward instead of westward, as if bearing toward the Straits of Mackinac rather than toward Sleeping Bear Dunes near Point Betsy.

So began a relay that will proceed at less than highway velocity for three days over about 270 miles in a zigzag pattern through remote parts of the northern Lower Peninsula.

It's chaos under precarious control.

It's tired, sweaty people trying to navigate trails through wilderness while almost 200 autos buzz from exchange to exchange by road.

It's a rush I only began to appreciate with a team meeting last night at lodgings in Hale.

What did I do to deserve this insanity?

I'm here in the boondocks with team Snot Rockets, based in southwest Michigan: long-suffering, long-rallying characters with a fair history of success in past relays. The Snotties offer as good an example as any of a relay tradition of gross or fanciful nicknames.

My first leg, 5.4 miles through choking dust kicked up by dozens of team autos, earned me a t-shirt for enduring "hills hills hills."

Two legs ago the Snotties lost a few minutes due to a runner's wrong turn in the middle of nowhere. Snot Ready, a veteran Rocket, said the team has never done a relay without at least one runner getting lost.

Friday, 8:08 p.m.: Onaway. Partly overcast and cooling off.

A second wrong turn delayed the Snot Rockets a half hour or more. Big Sexy logged an extra four miles on a three-mile leg in baking heat before Tailbone and Waterboiler drove him back - in order to complete his leg in full - to the point where he'd diverged from the course. He felt terrible. Snotties agreed the printed directions and map were ambiguous.

Runners from other teams made the same error.

Ambiguities are part of the relay's cachet. Teams must not only run fast but navigate a clean course both on trails and roads, both on foot and in autos. One runner's lengthy side trip along the forking ways through the forests could drop a team several slots in the standings.

It boggles the mind organizers piece it all together in the first place. Imagine the logistics of laying out 270 miles of race course in 57 legs, backing it up with running and driving directions measured to the tenth of a mile. Imagine the logistics of getting the individuals of a small roster of volunteers from one exchange zone to another at the necessary hour.

Those volunteers risk as much or more than runners by standing or sitting under a blazing sun all day.

Saturday, July 16, 11:02 a.m.: Otsego County. Hot and partly cloudy.

The Snot Rockets crossed the day-one finish line at Millersburg - with Waterboiler carrying the baton through the grueling last "Tommy" leg - in sixth place out of 24 teams in the mixed division. Tiny deficits behind fifth and fourth places bulged to 90 minutes behind first place. A woman from the leading team, Frontline Fanatics, a mixture of runners from all over the state, accepted my congratulations early this morning as if embarrassed at the notoriety.

Twenty minutes later she overtook me during my 3.2-mile leg.

After a 4:30 a.m. wakeup, three other Snotties and I split from the rest of the team to do the early legs. Tweaze, Snot Ready and I later drove ahead to wait for the others to advance the team to this point near Atlanta - if dead reckoning means anything - in the Mackinaw State Forest.

Sweltering heat has already settled on the heads of runners. The three of us at the layover have no idea about our team's headway. We can only calculate a rough arrival time.

If we see no sign of our runner by 1 p.m., we'll begin to worry about delays.

Sunday, July 17, 4:41 a.m.: Grayling. Foggy and calm before dawn. The Snot Rockets ran a fast, clean race yesterday for 103 miles while other teams in our division suffered long delays during an early leg in the region of the Pigeon River. Team veterans expect to move up in the standings, but we won't know by how much before getting score sheets in just over an hour.

Two errors could have cost the team. The three waiting at the layover waited too long to go to the exchange, leaving Doe Eyes, more frantic than normal at the end of her leg, with no one to hand off to for three or four minutes. Fruit Loops, Snot Ready and Bad Dan, making a wrong turn in a support vehicle onto a restricted trail, a mistake quickly rectified, almost exposed the Rockets to a two-hour time penalty.

My afternoon 10K leg took me through a moderate rain that cooled the air. What I thought was approaching thunder proved to be howitzer fire from Camp Grayling. I never got the chance to thank a driver from another team who called, "Left turn," as I ran past a corner. If not for his kindness I would have lost three or four minutes hoofing it to the next corner and back.

By now, true to human nature - japes having rocketed to snotty heights by last night's team meeting - many members have nicknames.

I'm Bad Dan.

Monday, July 18, 9:01 a.m.: Home in Martin. Hot and muggy. As it turns out, the Snot Rockets ran a daily second best in the classification on Saturday, two days ago. Rising at 4:30 to 5 a.m. for Sunday's 70 miles of racing, the team found itself in third place behind Mizuno of Ann Arbor (first) and Frontline Fanatics.

My two legs yesterday carried me through a peaceful pine forest beside the Manistee River and over sand hills near Traverse City.

Snotties again on Sunday ran fast and clean, taking another daily second place, but not by enough to move up from third place overall.

Each Snottie wrung the last ounces of energy from an aching body. Corkscrew showed her heels to women less than half her age. Fruit Loops outran his water stops. Snot Ready worked herself as breathless as the evening years ago when she met Bob Dylan.

Tailbone passed through tears due to a bad back, Tenderfoot through blood due to cut feet, all the rest through sweat due to the overheated northern air.

Big Sexy conquered the "Last Hill and Testament." Tweaze brought the figurative baton home along an idyllic beach in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to the finish line.

Doubtless every other team could tell a similar tale of effort and pain among runners.

At the end the waves of Lake Michigan washed over the Snot Rockets, Jungle Rot and other infections.

Afterward co-race director Bob Baril spoke of an emotional roller coaster for himself and colleague Nick Papas.

"We've never had as many people lost as yesterday," Baril said. "Then today comes along, and everybody's happy to make it to the beach, and they're congratulating us on the event."

In the end hundreds of runners crossed a figurative heart of darkness between the lighthouse beacons of Tawas Point and Point Betsy. They sweetened the pot for Special Olympics by $8,400 into the bargain.

The Nasty Boys entertained them at an awards banquet at Benzie Central High School with an original song about how the feat should earn the Nasties fame in the runners' world. If memory serves, the boys sang:

"Wanna see my picture on the cover.

Wanna buy five copies for my mother."

Not to worry. The nasty reputation is well known to many a Michigan runner. MR