JINGLE BELL JOG (Manistee - 2020 - 5K)
261 Mile Drive
My love of Michigan’s west coast and Lake Michigan gets me
really excited about west coast Michigan cities I have not been to. Manistee was no exception. I was hoping to stop into Manistee when I ran
in Free Soil but had forgotten about the Wings of Mercy race that Saturday
night. I got a hotel for the Jingle Bell
Run in Manistee that was dog friendly with a continental breakfast and pool. I always try to stay under $120. There are nice family hotels in that price
range.
The ride up to our hotel was not bad. We drove up in the evening. I was able to stuff, sticker and stamp 80
Christmas cards on the way up. Jason
doesn’t usually drive to runs. He did
this time so I could become Buddy the Elf and get our cards finished. It was good teamwork. I dropped our Christmas cards off at the
Manistee Post Office the next morning.
The Days Inn of Manistee was a nice inexpensive hotel with a
pool that was open late. We went down to
the pool after arriving past 10:00pm.
After 30 minutes we had the entire pool and hot tub to ourselves. The kids love hotels with pools. I always try to find that amenity in addition
to being dog friendly and having free continental breakfasts. With our family size continental breakfasts
save us a lot of money. They had a great
continental breakfast the next morning with waffles, eggs, sausage and
more. Corky enjoyed the sausage and bed
at the Days Inn.
I knew race day would be cold.
I had bought feet warmers at Dick’s back home. Unfortunately, even though they were warm,
they were very uncomfortable and after walking around the hotel I took them out
and put in my alpaca shoe liners instead.
I like the alpaca liners a lot. I
got them at the Town Peddler in Livonia.
They keep my feet very warm during winter runs while providing extra
cushion.
It was sleeting in Manistee the morning of the run. As the sleet hit the ground it melted in some
places, in others it formed black ice.
It became a very dangerous course as black ice got mixed in with steep city
hills. I couldn’t believe some of the elite
runners that took off full speed down the starting hill with long strides. I still wonder how they did not slip
once. I wish I could have asked them if
they had something on their shoes. In my
experience, YakTraks don’t work as well
on roads with thin black ice. They do
best in hard snow and thicker ice. I
didn’t wear mine for that reason.
I was given an awesome shoe jingle bell on a safety pin for my
shoe. It was just like Alma’s jingle
bell, just smaller. A cute kind of
smaller. It didn’t jingle quite as
loud. They gave us our finisher medals
in advance with our cool green long sleeve shirts. I saw an awesome reindeer onesie family and a
few dogs before the run. It was a good
turn out for a cold winter run up north.
I ran by awesome Christmas homes and the giant Morton Salt plant. They had a long-flagged finish line. Waiting at the finish was the one of the best
post-race food stations! They had Jason’s favorite Little Debbie Christmas tree
cakes. They also had oatmeal cream
cakes, brownies, fruit snacks and fruit.
The Black Bear Christmas fruit snacks were so good I ordered a Costco
size box when we got back home. I
donated the Little Debbie’s Christmas Tree to Jason. They are one of his favorites.
We checked out downtown Manistee after the run. It was sad to see many shops out of business.
This is the third run we have noticed a
lot of vacant shops. House of Flavors
looked like a neat place had it not shut down permanently. We got tacos at “Taco Bout It.” I loved their name and indoor décor. It was nice being in town during the
Christmas season even though it was cold.
There is a lot of older architecture in Manistee. I stopped to take a picture of Manistee Iron
Works because it was such a cool building. It was right by the cool railroad drawbridge. Manistee was a lot more industrial than I
had expected. I didn’t know Morton Salt
had a huge manufacturing plant in Manistee.
We went inside a game store downtown that had a huge Pikachu costume in
the window. The owner said he wears it
during the holidays. At Halloween he
gives kids coupons that give discounts based on an in-store D20 dice roll. Jason bought DnD figurines for the kids
Christmas stockings.
Before we left town we stopped at the beach. I have never seen Lake Michigan sand so
smooth. It was footprint free and picture
perfect. I was shocked the kids wanted
to play at 5th Avenue Park with the temperature. The park had a very tall metal slide that
landed towards the lake. All three kids
were terrified to walk up it. After
several minutes of debate they all made it up very nervously. Their sliding made for the most epic action
shots.
We saw even more Christmas decorations on the way home. Some were very unique and homemade. We stopped at the The Lakes Mall in Muskegon
to get pictures with Santa. We saw a
creepy Halloween man outside of a music store and a cool interactive mall
reindeer. We got the best food at
Corine’s Cakes and Catering. It tasted
like good old-fashioned southern home cooking.
They had won awards for their food.
Things I take from the Manistee Jingle Bell Run are:
1. The very challenging
course that had me worried on and off the entire 3.10 miles. I never knew if I would hit black ice. I finished without slipping or falling, but I
did run slower to avoid a potential harder fall had I wiped out.
2. I got to see the
official starting pistol and take a picture of it. There are different ways to start
participants at running events. Most that
I have been to use a loud horn. It’s
rare to see the old fashion pistol. In
Saugatuck they used an epic cannon!
3. I liked the Manistee jingle bell man race mascot. Even though I don’t like masks I didn’t mind
that they put one on him this year. It
is accurate of the time and craziness. It
will always be remembered in running history.
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