Hattiesburg to Sioux Falls
I got a random text from an old friend of mine who was wondering if I could help out an old friend of his, who was planning on running the Sioux Falls bike trail for a marathon PR attempt. Down the rabbit hole I went and what I found was an amazing journey that I couldn’t wait to be a part of.
My friend (Joe Holt) who I knew from high school and college and who briefly lived in Sioux Falls, had also spent some time down in Hattiesburg Mississippi. Down there he had met Zach Vogt, whom he had connected with on Strava and followed his activities even after moving from SD to Anchorage Alaska. Zach had mentioned in one of his runs that he was going to run the SuFu Circuit and that’s what led Joe to introduce Zach to me, in hopes I could help him navigate the bike trail in the best possible way to maximize his PR potential.
I had to know why a guy from Hattiesburg Mississippi (1110 miles away) was coming up here to run a marathon, and as you may have guessed, some of it had to do with Covid-19. But what inspired me was the rest of the story. Zach said simply that he decided in August of 2019 that he would get sober and in doing so, target a sober PR attempt in every distance from a 5k to a 50k over the next year. As he stated, “Having been a hobby jogger the prior 10 years but never sober, the mystery and challenge of finding my actual ceiling at these distances became super interesting and thrilling to me – like I had found running for the first time.” Now if that doesn’t inspire you I don’t know what will. I knew then that I couldn’t just tell him where to best run, I had to plan out a perfect route and make sure he could run it without having to make any decisions along the way, giving him the ability to push hard and zone out for 26.2 miles.
I created three different routes and we got together on Zoom with Joe for a walk through of the three options. We talked through the pros and cons, and decided on a route that worked best for him and one that would allow his wife to supply him with hydration when he needed it along the way. We would start at Fawick Park heading south on the bike trail, taking a couple loops around Yankton Trail park, diverging off the main loop onto the west side trails up to Legacy Park, and then taking the loop north the rest of the way around to Falls Park.
So how again does Sioux Falls fit into this? Well, his June marathon got canceled and he pivoted to Fargo, which also ultimately got cancelled. His flights couldn’t be cancelled though, so he was stuck with a flight into Rapid City and out of Minneapolis. What’s in-between those two cities with a fast, flat marathon course…the Sioux Falls bike trail loop! The planning started from there to do some tourist stuff in Rapid, marathon PR attempt in Sioux Falls, and fly back home the next day.
With the trip planned, route locked down, I couldn’t just let him run it without some help along the way, so I offered to pace him on the bike to make sure everything went according to plan. Saturday the 29th at 7am we took off together and everything went smoothly until Yankton Trail Park. There was a soccer tournament and I hadn’t anticipated the traffic on the road that we were looping on. We tweaked the route and only did one lap with an out and back on the south bike path. We also almost missed his wife because she got pulled over on the way there in the rental car (still don’t know if she just got a warning or not)! The rest of the way was much less dramatic and he held strong running 6:20 miles and looked strong. On the north bike trails by the airport is when he started getting nauseous. I kept up the encouragement but his feet slowed. We finally made it to the downhill from the penitentiary and he finished at the bottom of the hill at the farmers market (with my wife and kids ringing cowbells) in a final time of 2:53. He set his PR by 6 minutes! After some refreshments, running club swag swapping, and stretching in the sun, we said our goodbyes and he head off to get cleaned up and drive to Minneapolis for the flight home.
It was an awesome experience to be a part of and a great way to show someone what we are all about here in South Dakota. I know neither of us will ever forget it!
