Pigeon Sunset Classic (Pigeon - 2021 - 5K)
185 Mile Drive
Registration:
The Pigeon Sunset Classic
really interested me because I love driving to the thumb, I loved the city
name, evening start and I thought their shirt design with wind turbines in the
sunset was amazing. The run was on a
Thursday, which is very uncommon for a run.
I saw an opportunity to get an extra city in on an open day that wouldn’t
interfere with other runs. The only hard part would be the three-hour drive to
Pigeon and back the same night. It would
be a beast. If the kids had been in
school, going to this run would not have been possible.
I registered for the Pigeon Sunset Classic on the
Sheurer Health website. They had a very
short and sweet race description. The website
layout was very user friendly with great bolded headers, soft fonts and nice accent
artwork.
Packet pick-up was
quick with nice staff. They were very organized
with shirts rolled and rubber banded in lunch bags with bibs. Volunteers wore peach-colored shirts with the
same design that distinguished them from participants wearing the same navy
colored race shirt.
Course:
The kids played in
the grass field by the start and finish while I ran. The course was a very fun and engaging course
with a lot of support from Pigeon locals.
There were no significant inclines on the course. The course path curved a lot. It was a great tour of Pigeon. Starting at Scheurer Hospital grounds we went
behind the hospital into Pigeon neighborhoods.
I saw two large groups of people watching participants before we entered
Pigeon Rotary Park and ran by a baseball game.
We ran around what looked to be a sledding hill in the park. As we left the rotary park we passed a large
canopy tent and an elephant ears food stand (not currently open).
It was back into Pigeon
neighborhoods for a short while. One
spectator sitting in a foldable chair on her driveway pointed us to turn right
at the fork in the road. We ran right up
next to the concrete silos of The Cooperative Elevator. It was at the silos I saw the lead runner on his
way back to the finish. That was almost
at the halfway point of the race (1.20 miles)
It also happened to be the course aide station location. There was an ambulance parked on a road near
the silos. I overhead a runner near me
yell to the EMTs in the ambulance. I
think she thanked them. They responded by
saying it was good they hadn’t had to move.
It was a unique spot to have an ambulance positioned. I almost always see ambulances near the start
and finish of a race.
We finished the 5K course
running through more neighborhoods, an awesome stretch of Michigan Avenue through
downtown Pigeon and back to the hospital.
The last quarter mile of the
course was the same as the first quarter mile.
Swag:
Swag for the Pigeon
Sunset Classic had me worried for weeks.
Online registration mentioned that only the first 100 participants would
be receiving one of their awesome t-shirts.
There ended up being 70 participants that completed the 5K. Everyone that showed up got a great t-shirt
with the wind turbines in the sunset. I was
really excited when I walked up to registration and saw a shirt in my bag. At that time I didn’t know how many race
participants were present. I’m not a
huge supporter of wind turbines in general (on the fence), but I like the fact
that the run incorporated a big aspect of their town into their race logo. I think they did a fantastic job on shirt
design.
Food:
The post-race food table
had a three metal bowls, one with apples, one with halved bananas and one with bagels
cut in half with a plastic knife in a bag.
A separate plastic bowl had single serving JIF peanut butter containers.
There were two plastic kid pools on the ground near the food table. One pool was filled with mini 8oz water
bottles on ice and the other had assorted 12oz Gatorade bottles on ice. Corky enjoyed the leftover peanut
butter. The kids liked the fruit and bagel
and Jason enjoyed the Gatorade. It was
nice to sit and eat in the grass while watching the 5K award ceremony.
Awards:
There was a very
nice and very official awards ceremony with an MC that reminded me of a Detroit
Red Wings commentator. He had a radio
host voice and was very loud. It was the
right kind of loudness for announcing to a crowd. He announced cities that each age group winner
was from. It was so cool. I was really frustrated with myself for running
so hard and coming in just short of third place. It would have been so cool to have Marshall
announced with how far we drove. Jason
had told me to run fast which is something he normally doesn’t do, so I did. I didn’t get a PR, but I ran faster than I
have at 5Ks for months. I really pushed
myself in Pigeon. After the awards ceremony
concluded the MC took a few minutes to thank sponsors and announce participants
that had driven a long way to come to Pigeon.
Three women from Midland, Rochester Hills and Oakland, Michigan were
announced with a Grand Rapids man. The two
women from Oakland County had a long two-hour drive and the woman from Midland
a solid hour and fifteen minutes. The
Grand Rapids man had almost the exact same drive time we had at three hours. I was very surprised coming three hours from
Marshall I didn’t make the MC’s distance list with only four people on it and
three with shorter distances. I thought
I had another shot at getting acknowledged after not placing and it was 0-2 in
one night. Sometimes a participant’s hometown
may be a great distance from a run, but they were staying at a friends,
visiting family etc and didn’t actually drive that far…
…Or they are just as
insane as I am.
Either way, I like seeing people from all
over coming to small town runs.
Wooden plaques with
gold accents were given to the overall male and female 5K winners. Smaller trophies were given to first place
age group winners in five-year increments.
Second and third place age group award winners were given medals with a
large “2nd” and “3rd” on them. Second place medals were silver with red
lanyards. Third place medals were bronze
with yellow lanyards. I love that first-place
age group winners got really special small trophies instead of medals. I have never seen that done at a race before
Pigeon.
City Notes:
I got a lot of great
scenic pictures on our drive up to Pigeon.
There were cool marsh areas, hilarious billboards on the expressway,
awesome corn fields and of course the mesmerizing wind turbine fields. The Harvest Wind Farm covers five miles of farm
fields and produces 52.8 megawatts of electricity. There are thirty two 400 foot turbines in Harvest
Wind Farm field.
(https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/harvest-wind-turbines-elkton-and-pigeon-michigan/)
Pigeon is also home
to Apple Blossom Wind Farm which broke construction 6 years ago in 2016. Apple Blossom has 29 wind turbines and can power 38,000 Michigan homes.
(https://thumbwind.com/michigan-wind-farm-map/apple-blossom-wind-farm/)
Besides being known
for over sixty one 400 foot tall hunks of metal that rotate through their farm
fields Pigeon is only 7.5 miles from the shores of Lake Huron. In 2003 Pigeon’s Cooperative Elevator was the
largest grain, feed and bean processing company in Michigan. The business was started six years before the
town of Pigeon was incorporated in 1897.
It's concrete silos, still used today, were built in 1950 and could hold
160,000 bushels of food each. By 1966 The
Cooperative had 27 silos and could ship 500 rail cars full of beans, wheat and
corn around the country. By 2013 capacity
grew from 300,000 bushels to 21.2 million bushels including their other thumb locations.
(https://www.coopelev.com/about-us/co-op-history/)
The coolest part of
the Cooperative Elevator Co. was seeing the shoots coming off each silo that poured
food right into box cars of trains and cargo beds of trucks.
We saw a lot of
history in Pigeon. The older buildings
in the city made for great black and white photographs. Pigeon had a really nice Firefighter memorial
in front of their Farmer’s Market. The
Pigeon Library was quant and very nice with an awesome Pigeon silhouette above the
name. A gas station in town had a “Welcome
to Pigeon” mural on the door.
The sun was setting
as we left Pigeon. The sky turned bright
pink and purple. It was a really
beautiful night ride out of the city.
City Sign:
There were two standard green metal signs we found in town. One was a city limit sign and one said “Welcome to Pigeon.” I got a picture with the city limit sign on our way to the run and the other two signs as we were leaving town. I was very glad that we found the huge wooden sign in the center of town. That kind of city sign is the one I am always searching for, the sign each city uniquely creates. I was so glad Pigeon’s city sign was all lit up with plenty of light. I don’t take a lot of city sign pictures at night, but when I have, they haven’t always been lit up. Pigeon’s city sign had a roof on it just Grass Lake’s city sign. It was a much larger version.
Other Awesomeness:
It was a very long six hour round trip for a 5K run,
yet no part of the trip seemed exhausting. The kids had a great time trying out their new
scoop ball sets. The weather was
perfect. We had a great Red Lobster
dinner on the way to Pigeon. We are a
lot further from thumb cities living in Marshall. I miss traveling to the thumb as frequently
as we used too. There is something about
the thumb of Michigan I really enjoy. I
loved the scenery on the drive to Pigeon.
I got one of the coolest hay bail field pictures and a lot of great
pictures of wind turbines, corn fields and a giant marsh with so many egrets!
Pigeon had an amazing event atmosphere with lively groovy
music playing loud and lots of spectators gathered by the start and finish. There many families at this run. The run was on Sheurer Hospital grounds. Right across North Caseville Road was the
helicopter pad for the hospital. We got
to see a helicopter landing during the awards ceremony. It was so cool! When we left to go home an ambulance was
leaving the helicopter pad. It didn’t have
its lights on so hopefully it wasn’t anything extremely serious. We had never been that close to a medical helicopter
pad before. In 2018 we saw a Michigan
State Police Trooper helicopter take off right in front of us on a grass field at
Light Up the Night in Saginaw.
I had an embarrassing hilarious mishap when I was
walking back to our car right after crossing the finish line. I pulled up my shirt to wipe sweat off my face
forgetting I wasn’t wearing a bra. I
normally do wear bras when I run. I had an
acid reflex flare up on the way to Pigeon and tighter clothing around the chest
of any kind makes the discomfort worse. Luckily,
Jason was the only one that got full exposure.
There was no one at that moment directly in front of me besides Jason. The rest of the running crowd was behind me
and couldn’t see anything. From time to
time I will use my shirt if I don’t have anything else to get perspiration off,
especially while I am running on a course.
I am so lucky to have been facing away from the crowd. A husband getting a quick flash is actually
pretty awesome.
While still in Pigeon we hit a cat that ran across the road. We stopped and Jason went into the corn field looking for it. It was yelling in pain but kept managing to run away from him when he tried to get to it. Jason eventually had to leave it as it went too deep into the field and was extremely hard to find with a cell phone flashlight. I really hope the cat had minor healable injuries. We’ve never hit a domesticated animal on all of our travels until we hit the Pigeon farm cat. It was a very unfortunate sad situation.
Course Rating: 4.9 Stars
Post-Race Food Rating: 4.7
Stars
Swag Rating: 4.3 Stars
Awards Rating: 4.9 Stars
Pigeon Sunset Classic Quote:
“Failure is a bruise, not a tattoo.” - Jon Sinclair.
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