Lakeland to Babson Park Florida

Point to point, self supported asphalt and hwy run from Lakeland to Babson Park.

Has anyone done something they never thought they could? Sure everyone has at some point right? This was the day for me. The crazy idea was to run our first "Ultra Marathon" while in Florida with my parents. Jen and I would run, my parents would meet us at the house later that afternoon. I would take 50 bucks, a cellphone and we both would carry water bottles. Distance: estimated 39 miles.

We awake early at 4a.m., have our coffee, and our cereal. Our cereal just so happens to have a endorsement by Dean Karnazes himself. I think its his food company, or he's partners or something. So we officially leave at 6a.m. sharp and head out onto the sidewalks, the grass embankments and the newly paved bike trail in Bartow. The first portion of the run is ok, lots of traffic headed to work on this Friday morning. We make it to the first aid station, also known as a Cumberland Gas station. this is where all the construction workers seem to like to hang out before work, and home to the filthiest bathroom the whole run. We buy water, some candy and get moving. The run along the new bike path leading into Bartow Fl is great. We rarely saw anyone and had a great easy surface to run on. Keep on trucking!

Moving through Bartow was interesting enough, this is the "Main" town for good ole' Polk County Fl-you know; the meth capitol of Florida! We traverse through our aid stations/Racetracks and keep on moving down Hwy98 until we merge into Hwy 60. If you are from Florida, you will know this as the most dangerous road in the state. Lucky for us we were only going a few miles past Lake Wales, that is where it really gets bad. Either way at this point the traffic was getting bigger, and faster. Semis moving at 70 mph, and lots of road kill. Lots of dust and dirt covered the side of the road as we ran toward the oncoming traffic. For some reason paranoia is in my blood, early on Hwy60 taking notice as we ran was an unmarked Sheriff on the other side of the road- he kept going. Whew! Hwy60 is a long, long road with more raccoons, opossums, and other creature that were not recognizable. I still swear we saw a FL Panther on the side of the road hit by a vehicle. Those same vehicles had never seen anyone actually running down the hwy before and they were very confused as to just what the hell we were doing. They only had to deal with it just this once though.

60 just keeps going, and the gas stations/aid stations suck. As we make it into Lake Wales and pass the IHOP I estimate that we have just passed mile 31! Our first 50k! We keep pushing and make our turn onto Hwy27, man it feels good to be on 27! I used to drive this route every weekend back in high school, and could just feel myself getting closer and closer! Hwy27's gas stations all have fried chicken! Every aid station we stop at has Chesters chicken fried up and sitting below heat lamps. MMmmm tasty! No, really we did not go there, just stuck to the crackers, candy, water and sports drinks. Onward we move past the semis, the tractors and the lowriders.

As we round the corner onto alt17 to get to the Lake House we are approached by that same unmarked Sheriff I saw earlier. He rolls down his window and asks if we are the same people he saw earlier in Bartow. We say yes, and he says "holly shit", yall' are crazy! How far ya goin" We respond with about 40 miles, he just shakes his head and leaves wishing us good luck. This is by far the best part of the run, we can see the lake from ontop the hill and every rolling hill is bringing us closer to home. Our last aid station is "Mini Mac's" in Babson Park. I spend my last 5 dollars out of the original 50 on water, sports drinks and candy and press on up the last hill of the run. As we near the turn onto Cody Villa road something makes us keep going, we continue on to the next road and decide to run this one in on the dirt roads through the orange groves.

Home sweet home, we made it. 9hrs 30 minutes, and now 42 miles later we have done it! Our first ultra, our first unsupported ultra run and our pride intact. What a great day, this would be the beginning of seeing just how far we can go.