EAST GRAND RAPIDS (10/16/04) - The Run Through Apple Country 10K passed over a rumpled terrain like waves on a sea. Runners crested a swell and sailed into a trough, only to paddle up another swell. Here and there a turn midway up a slope only meant a new tack toward a crest. With almost no flats, the mild bobbing never ceased.

Some runners embraced the wave action as part of the challenge of navigating toward port. None I know of got seasick or lost their sea legs.

It's all in the bobbing-for-apples game.

Tides of rain washed West Michigan prior to the 36th annual Apple Country run. Between damp warm-up cruises along East Grand Rapids' suburban streets, entrants warmed up in Aquinas College's dry fieldhouse, where volunteers waded through the shallows of registrations and the last 20 yards of the course was sheltered indoors, out of the arbitrary ebb and flow of weather.

The rain receded minutes before the 8 a.m. start of the 5K run, leaving entrants to contend with lesser nuisances such as wind, low-40s temperatures, the bobbing course through the 'burbs, and each other.

Calvin College senior Benjamin Dyke, 21, of Coopersville took the apple in his teeth as the first to emerge from the bobbing tub, his chip stopping the fieldhouse clock at 16:37.

An apple for the teacher went to Kelli Ludwig, 27, of Ada. The rangy women's winner, a teacher, docked in port at 19:51.

Ludwig, a Jackson native and Spring Arbor College graduate, confessed to burning out on the stresses of keeping her college times in the 18s and on the anxieties of competing. She said these days she enters maybe two races a year, surfing the distance with a clear head and a calm stomach.

"My friends talked me into doing this race," she said. "It's close to home."

The rain tides remained at ebb for the 8:45 a.m. start of the 10K, and, except for a sprinkle or two, stayed that way through the post-race medal awards. Runners splashed through puddles, like pools left by retreating seas, although none treaded on stranded Portuguese men-of-war, scared off foraging plovers, or disturbed egg-laying tortoises.

No one I know of spotted a scuttling crab apple.

Dyke bobbed up with another fruit in his teeth, stopping the clock at 35:52.

The apple of the 10K eye went to Gayle Kuipers, 39, of Holland. The compact Kuipers, eclipsed by Ludwig in the 5K by just eight seconds, showed the neon-green soles of her racing flats to all women in the longer race, sailing into harbor at 40:59.

Later, as one perplexed runner after another noted times as slow as if they'd navigated the roads under power of wind and sail instead of steam, Kuipers commented on the hills, concurring a swell at the five- mile mark qualified, however modestly, as a heartbreak hill.

"I was telling myself, 'Only a mile to go, only a mile to go,'" she said.

There were 161 entrants in the 5K, 139 in the 10K. Many runners doubled. Proceeds went to young people's programs at YMCA Camp Manitou-Lin near Middleville.

The rain tides washed again over West Michigan as runners dispersed to home ports. A mystic might venture that nature blessed the racing faithful with a few hours of relief from the damp.

How do you like them apples?

For complete race results, visit michiganrunner.net/results/ searchable.html. MR