Location: Sleepy Hollow State Park, Laingsburg, MI
Time of Year: August
Distance options: 5-mile, 10-mile, Half-marathon (13.1 miles)
Year(s) completed: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010 (10-mile), 2012 (half marathon), 2013, 2014 (5 mile)
The Legend is a fun trail race at Sleepy Hollow State Park in Laingsburg, MI. It is third and final of three races in Running Fit’s “Serious Series” along with Flirt With Dirt in Novi, MI and the Trail Marathon Weekend at the Pinckney Recreatin Area)
The park offers a wide-range of trail-scape, from dirt single track through trees, to wide-open grassy trails through and around fields. The race courses definitely hit on all of these areas, and in years past there have been a creek crossing or two, but I don’t think recently. The atmosphere is solid, with music playing loudly throughout (at the Start/Finish, not out on the course). The trails are pretty tight so it’s good that the race runs through the campground to start so it thins out a bit before getting into the trails.
In-race support consists of two or three water stations. It’s minimal but seems sufficient.
Running Fit usually puts on a pretty good post-race spread with baked goods, fruit, and water. 10-milers and half marathoners get a finisher’s medal and mugs have been the recent go-to age group prizes (5-deep). And usually there is other schwagg if you do all three races in the series.
Overall The Legend is a solid trail race, no matter which distance you do. It’s got great atmosphere and I also can’t help but support a race in my home town as well.
I recently ran the 5-mile again in 2014 and it was a slick but fun race! It had down-poured pretty hard the evening before so there was a good deal of mud throughout (the half marathon and 10-milers got a lot more messy, obviously), but everything was slippery even where not muddy.
This of course led to some slower times, but it didn’t stop it from being fun. It was slightly cooler than usual (starting temps in the high 50’s to low 60’s) although it was very humid (about 100%). The Running Fit crew was fun and in high spirits as usual.
The age-group (5-deep) prizes this year were glass coffee-mugs, which was a cool change from the usual beer-glasses there, which hadn’t changed in a couple years. Overall another great day at Sleepy Hollow State Park!