Syttende Mai

Bring on the lefse and lutefisk!

Syttende Mai is 'May 17' in Norwegian. It is the Norwegian Constitution Day. Wisconsin has a fair amount of Norwegian ancestry and in particular the village of Stoughton has a strong Norwegian influence. Every year Stoughton has a huge Syttende Mai festival and part of this festival is a 17 mile walk and 20 mile run. I've been wanting to do this run for awhile now, but it's never worked out until this year. Since I was in the point of my training for Grandma's where I was doing 20 milers, I decided to do the Syttende Mai run this year.

I went down to Janesville to my parent's house on Friday night so that I wouldn't have so far to drive on Saturday morning. I drove to Stoughton and took a bus to the capitol square in Madison, where the race started.

Since this was just a training run, it wasn't too exciting, but overall it was a good time. And I love getting in a supported long run. My Garmin died at about 12 miles, so I don't have too many details, but my official finishing time was 3:00:51 for a 9:03 min/mile average pce. This is great, since I typically like to do 20 miles in about 3 hours.

This walk and run is awesome in that the participants really represent a wide cross section. There are super speedy runners and there are people that you look at and think 'They are going to run 20 miles?!?'. The walk attracts even more people. It's great to see so many people excited to get out there for an endurance event.

There was no beer after the race, which was my only complaint. :)


Happy Running!

Jen