Fruitport Old-Fashioned Days Run
FRUITPORT (5/27/06) - Rick Bauer had a mystified face as he watched the awards ceremony after the 25th annual Fruitport Old-Fashioned Days Road Race. Bauer, of Holland, had just won the 10K run. Had he entered the 5K, he'd have been defending a championship. But the former Central Michigan University harrier and recent transplant to west Michigan, talked as if still unsure of what to make of the event's informalities.

He compared Fruitport to races on the state's east side as if he was familiar only with high-tech timing and competitive intensity.

Maybe he was not an old-fashioned guy.

Entrants, who clustered on the high school football field before the start in knots of friends who return for the race each year, got copies of a stapled booklet covering the event's history. They got no timing chip nor packet to clutter closets. They got the old-fashioned break of a $10 fee if they took no t-shirt.

Out on the course, with temperatures rising into the 60s en route to a Memorial Day weekend in the 90s, they mixed with highway traffic. But not enough to slow them down. Starting together, the 5K and 10K runners followed the road through a hollow and out of town.

As if leery of the country, the 5K runners made a 180-degree turn and backtracked.

The 10K runners went ahead into a region of fields, woodlots and fens little changed, probably, since old-fashioned days were young. Crossing a border, they made a triangular tour of Ottawa County before heading for home in Muskegon County. Back in town they finished in a chute on the football field.

No timer chirped when they crossed the line. A volunteer handed them numbered Popsicle sticks.

Other volunteers at a table took sticks and wrote names in scorebooks according to age groups. Race director Don Wood read the names of the medalists out of a master scorebook at the awards ceremony.

Taking honors in the 5K were Jessica Clark on the women's side, posting a 20:03.87, and Billy Stone on the men's side, posting a 17:26.84.

Youngest-runner Kevin Losee, 4, posted a 44:29.03.

Women's 10K winner Melissa Bergeron said she decided to run the Fruitport race only after the organizers reduced age groups from 10 years to five. She was disappointed in her 44:40.94 time.

"It was not as good as I'd like," she said. Then, smiling, she held up her trophy. "But that's all right."

Bauer, apparently still not an old-fashioned guy, had a mystified look as the ceremony ended. His watch had told him he'd run the 10K about 30 seconds slower than the 34:31.67 in the scorebook.

Wood, as race director, was still an old-fashioned guy after 25 years with the event. He'd played an integral part in the race's 1982 beginning.

"I helped set up the course," he said. "I ran the first few races."

According to Wood, registrations peaked in the 1980s in the 400 range, falling in recent years as low as the 150 range. This year 196 runners crossed the finish line.

"It was up a little bit," Wood said. "But I think the running boom is down."

He made no apologies for the low-tech character of a race that funds community projects through the local Lions Club. Over the years, he said, Fruitport had attracted every kind of runner, with a cross section from trotters to quarter horses.

"We have lots of families that run together," he said. "We have little kids all mixed up with hotshots."

I was no hotshot, but my conditioning was good, and at the one-mile placard my time was on pace, right to the second, for a PR in the 10K. At two miles it was over the pace by several seconds; at three miles it was under by a tad; at four miles it was hopelessly over.

By then it was clear I couldn't trust the mile markers to give me a pace. But that's the kind of thing I expected in a low-tech race. It went with the territory. And anyway, my legs went south as I went north up a slope approaching the five-mile placard. I finished more than a minute off my PR.

But, to take the words out of Bergeron's mouth, that's all right. I'm too old and casual to worry about records. And the Fruitport race was a good way to spend a holiday-weekend morning.

All a runner needed was a casual streak to be an old-fashioned guy. MR