Living History Farms Race 2009

So I (Adam)finished off the running season with the exciting Living History Farms Cross Country Race (though the season isn't done, but what is a running season anyway, stay tuned for the big one coming up). It has been over 20 years since I last ran this race and it has changed a lot. This time I wasn't a high school cross country runner with the flu. Also, I vaguely remember climbing fences and maybe crossing a creek on some stepping stones, but that's as wild as it got. Here is this year's course map. Nowadays it's known for drawing people from all over the country (maybe even other countries), many of whom dress up in costumes and don't actually run.	Adam finishing the race.
Before	After
I kept my costume to a minimum, you might recognize the shirt from The Office. Dwight Schrute wore a similar one in the 5K Fun Run For The Cure.
	The run is billed as the largest cross country race in the U.S. with over 7000 register racers. I made the mistake of starting at the end of the huge crowd so I spent most of my time passing walkers and "non-racers".
It was a really foggy day making for a cold, wet race. Oh, and did I mention it was 40 degrees out? It really was a messy experience with 8-creek crossings where the water was at least knee high (see the video below). We don't have any pictures of me in the back part of the course, but here are some pictures from the Des Moines Register. It really was a fun time, but I just wish I could have run the whole thing, in the end I believe I walked about half a mile just for the bottlenecks.
I didn't make this video but it shows you a great example of the experience, you might get motion sickness from watching it.
Here is a video of one of the creek crossings.