Team Alewife (from left: Derek Thomasma, Scott Sullivan, Jennifer and Ray Antel, and Joel David) enjoys post-race R&R at Crystal. Photo by Scott Sullivan.

BEULAH (8/10) - Imagine there's a heaven. Crystal Lake, one of Paul Bunyan's biggest northwoods footprints, is my candidate on this dazzling summer day. Twenty-two years ago, dreamers in this village named for the Promised Land cast their eyes on the lake's clear water, drank in equally-crystal air and asked: degrees What would it be like to run around this? degrees What about tackling the test in teams?

A galaxy of stars leads off at the Crystal Lake TeamMarathon. Photo by Scott Sullivan.

Now I'm leadoff man for Team Alewife in the Crystal Lake Team Marathon. Lining up in front is talent as breath-taking as the setting: Michigan college and high-school legends Dathan Ritzenhein, Tim Moore, Tim Ross, Katie Danyko, Chris Toloff, girls from Rockford's distance dynasty. Also elbowing for space are "our guy" Joel David (more on him later), Justin Young from Team Hansons ... and these are only the leadoff runners.

My chances to finish in first look slim.

How did Beulah come to house more distance studs per capita than anywhere this side of Kenya's Rift Valley? How did this scribe find himself running first for a fivesome named for a Great Lakes junk fish, whose only hope is a double-agent?

Wild blueberries hold the key.

Orbs

Flash back 16 hours ago to dunes alongside Lake Michigan, north of Crystal. Ray Antel III, whose father Ray II helped dream up the Team Marathon, is guiding me on a run down wooded trails he knows like veins flowing through his body.

Ray III fell under the spell of cross country while running for Benzie Central teams coached by Eldon "Pete" Moss in the early '80s. Moss, whose tenure at the school since 1970 includes eight state-title teams, owns a Bunyanesque mythic status - except he's real.

Ray's love remains. I first met him six years ago when he was starting a Wayland Road Runners summer running club, which he planned to fit in between teaching and coaching cross country (adding track later) at Kelloggsville junior and senior high schools, being a father of two (now four), maintaining a running streak (since abandoned) and penning poetry that drew on his Beulah background.

He's the only Republican Cub Scout leader I know who wears shoulder-length hair, tie-dyed t-shirts, earring and beard bound by rubber bands: a sum appearance that makes him everyone's choice at St. Therese Church to play Jesus at Easter festivals, though parishioners have not gone so far as to crucify him yet.

Ray's wedding preparations included scavenging dead alewives washed up on beaches, encasing them in plastic and selling limited- edition alewife pins. "They paid for Jennifer and my honeymoon meals," he says. Our team name pays tribute to America's spirit of enterprise and equality that lets me line up near Ritzenhein in a race.

So we're on the beach - looking north toward Sleeping Bear Dune and the Manitous, and ahead to the race - when Ray says, "Let's get blueberries." We run to a grove where the gems grows wild, snack and load a hat with fruit to be cooked into post-race pancakes.

I hold up one orb, round and blue like the Earth seen from heaven, the skull of Yorick perceived by Hamlet, and snap it down.

It is tart and sweet.

The Buzz

In the Michigan running world, Rockford rocks. The school's girls have won four-straight Division 1 cross crowns; the boys, paced by two-time individual champs Jason Hartmann and Ritzenhein, were 1997-99 runners-up and 2000 champions. The Rams get immense team turnouts and support from the North Kent Running Club, which has made the Team Marathon - held the weekend before school practices start - a late-summer ritual.

Cleanse your lungs with Crystal air and your soul with sunsets, enjoy camaraderie in a sport based on sweat and solitude, splash off after in celebration ... and you'll know why.

Such attractions, plus the chance to compete against Rockford greats, have drawn others to run a race that offers no prize money, chip times, bibs to pin on or batons to pass (just slap hands). It's as much a pilgrimage as a race: so low-key that afterward, when results have been hand-tallied and it's announced that "Pete" Moss will dispense awards "when we find him," you find the legendary coach waiting at the finish with a stopwatch, by himself, in case there is anyone still not in.

Pre-race buzz is rife on what stars will be here. Michigan Runner of the Year Kyle Baker, NCAA cross-country champion Boaz Cheboiywo of Eastern Michigan, and indoor track king Adrian Blincoe are no-shows or late scratches, but teams replace them with other standouts.

Notre Dame All-American Todd Mobley, from Walled Lake Central, recruits an all-star team, prompting Ritzenhein/Hartmann's defending- champ Rockford alumni (armed with their own all-star import, Tom Greenless from Milford/the University of Michigan) to name themselves "Mobley Dick."

The appearance of the red-and-yellow Team Hansons van at a Beulah motel fuels more smalltown speculation. Hansons' Olympic- development program for post-collegians has been a national success story. Who, among its stars, will step off the van?

As I stretch on race morning, early light casts prancing shadows, illumines muscles, glares in hair as if minds beneath had been set on fire.

The Race

The course starts and ends near a lakeside park, zigzags through downtown, ascends tough hills east, barrels down a rooted, rutted two- track, returns to roads and descends downtown for a pell-mell finish amid a funnel of fans; there you slap hands with teammate two. "Ritz" runs the five-mile first leg in 23:05, a 4:37 pace. Also out-leaning me (let's presume they are very tall) are, in quick succession, Moore (around 24:00), David (24:04), Toloff (24:06) and Young (24:10). Ross, a five-time Division 2 state champ in track and cross country, fifth in the cross country nationals last fall, crosses seventh in this fast field.

My 31:42 puts us more than a mile behind, but Team Alewife's status is about to improve considerably. Derek Thomasma, all-state for Ray III's Kelloggsville team five years ago, is our choice to traverse the run's hilliest five-mile stretch.

Derek, who bypassed college for the "real world" (such as is), owns a home, two cars, power boat and is running as fast as ever. He works and plays hard, yet is so genuine and gentle that Ray and Jennifer's kids adore him. Derek, 22, and Jennifer are the two "adults" on our team. Derek passes throngs of teams I have put us behind, "to motivate you," I explain to him through the window of our team van. He's not convinced. Ray runs next, then Jennifer. These are flat five-mile stretches rounding the far west side of Crystal, offering water views that are jaw-dropping. Ray's days of 16:30 5Ks are behind, but he runs his leg faster than expected. So does Jennifer, remarkably trim and sane after having four babies in six years. The adrenaline tide for us Alewives is high.

By now teams are spread for miles. Ray drives the van, Derek rides a mountain bike helping Jennifer while I try to rein in the two younger Antel children, Max, 3, and Zoe, 2, who have taken to flinging Goldfish crackers ("Look, flying fish!") in back.

Ahead waits Joel David, who ran leg one for an Eastern Michigan University five he assembled and will handle the 10K final leg for our team.

I first met Joel when he was a junior, a year behind Derek, running for Kelloggsville; a math whiz who spray-painted racing shoes day-glow green and lugged them to meets in his grandma's bowling bag. And that's where his quirks began ...

Joel started college at Eastern, transferred, became a small-college All- American, transferred back and is finally eligible to run for his initial school, EMU. As our anchor, he swoops by rivals so fast their eyes pop. "What's HE doing back here?" they ask as we whoop and pound the sides of our team van. "We made it possible," we reply.

The leaders finish while Jennifer is still running. Hansons (2:09:06) and "Mobley Dick" (2:10:31) break the old course record.

"Kevin Doyle ran a 24:20 second leg that moved us from fifth to first," coach Kevin Hanson will tell me afterward. "Our other guys (Mike Fox, Trent Briney and Richie Brinker) kept us there."

Following "Mobley Dick" (Ritzenhein, Ryan Mol, Greenless, Seth Folkertsma and Hartmann) are Mobley's reconstituted all-stars (Toloff, Steve Sherer, Kaleb VanOrt, Jake Flynn and Mobley) in 2:12:40. Moore is on the fourth-place team, Joel's EMU five takes fifth.

The women's competition is even tighter. "Five Hanson Hellions" - largely alumni from Sterling Heights Stevenson, coached by Kevin - edge a Rockford alumni five named for Jordan Hartmann, Jason's sister, 2:42:09 to 2:43.03.

Running for the "Hellions": Danyko, Michelle Terry, Nicole Blake, Tracey Priska and Laura Murphy. For "Jordan Hartmann" (including alternate): Jordan Hartmann, Kalin Toedebusch, Emily Blakeslee, Linsey Blaisdell, Aimee Keenan and Nora Colligan.

"Krazy Kaiser's Saints," from Aquinas College, are coed winners. Val Kunde, Josh May, Joe Lynn, Dan Kasprowicz and Nate Kaiser finish in 2:25:42.

Team Alewife crosses in 2:56:42. Once we find "Pete" Moss, he dispenses medals, including one to his former harrier/now coaching peer Ray III for our third in the Coed, Combined Ages 116-199 division. Many of the record 122 teams win medals, whose rims, held to sunlight, shine reminiscent of our just-completed path around Crystal Lake.

Another day in paradise nears its end. Photo of Cystal Lake by Scott Sullivan.

Return

"You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My delight in her, and your land Beulah." (Isaiah 62:4)

There's a valedictory sense heading home from here. School and work beckon, Sleeping Bear and her cubs gather berries for hibernation. Winter's beauty waits as certainly as the next cycle, waking once more from dreams to find ourselves at water's edge with a notion, on a ridge with a fist of blueberries, ripe and passing into what's next.