TRAVERSE CITY -- Eric Houghton has competed in several Frozen Foot races, some so brutally cold "you were better off staying home."
Not Saturday.
Mild January temperatures brought out 240 runners for the annual five-mile run, which started and ended at Eastern Elementary.
"I don't remember it being quite this nice before," said Houghton, the men's winner in 27:43. "It's awesome to see this many people out in the winter doing this."
A year ago, 170 finished the race, but those runners had to contend with harsh winter conditions.
"The wind chill was 20 below last year," race director Jeff Gaft said.
Interlochen's Bridgett Widrig captured the women's race in 34:05.
"It was a great day for a race," Widrig said. "Conditions were fantastic."
Roads were dry, a stark contrast to last year when falling snow made for a slippery trek.
Houghton trailed Max DeKarne by about five seconds at the mile mark. That's when he decided to "see what I could do." He took the lead on the main hill on the course.
"I went pretty hard up Timberlane," he said. "I rolled down. When I got to the bottom, I felt pretty good."
DeKarne fell back into second and finished in 28:40.
"When we got to the hill, it was downhill for me," he said.
DeKarne, a freshman, was one of about 20 runners from the Grand Valley Running Club competing.
"They (club) ran it last year," he said. "They thought it was a fun race and decided to do it again."
Widrig, meanwhile, looked strong crossing the finish line.
"I didn't have any trouble at all," she said. "I couldn't have asked for a better day."
Not only was the temperature hovering around 30, but there was little wind.
"I was thankful for the conditions out there," DeKarne said. "I hate wind."
So does Dave McGillivray, the Boston Marathon director, who was the guest speaker Friday night at the Bayshore In Training program. McGillivray, an accomplished distance runner, stayed to run the Frozen Foot,.
"I think everyone should be pleased with the conditions today," he said. "This is balmy for this time of the year."
McGillivray said running in the cold doesn't bother him.
"For me, it's not the heat, it's not the cold, it's not the snow, it's not the rain, it's the wind -- that's the most difficult condition to run in," he said.
"I ran a marathon in New Orleans one year (on the bridge) over Lake Pontchartrain. It's the luck of the draw there. Either you get the wind at your back and you run a personal best or you get the wind in your face and it's hellacious. One year I ran it with the wind in my face and it was the most amazing run I've had in my life. It was almost like survival of the fittest. We ran as a pack. Everyone alternated taking the lead so we could draft off each other. We said if we don't do this none of us are going to survive, so we might as well help each other out. That's we did it the entire way."
