Lake Monona Legs

They ran the annual Lake Monona 20K this morning, 12.4 miles, clockwise, around Lake Monona. This is one of the oldest foot races in Madison, dating to the mid-1970s, maybe the early 1970s -- it used to be on the old Vilas Running Club schedule, somewhere between February's 10-kilometer Freezeroo around Lake Wingra and May's Syttende Mai 20-mile run from Madison to Stoughton. The race has changed organizers at least a couple times over the 30 or so years it's been run, but it's still going. There were 653 finishers today -- 373 men, 280 women. About three-fourths of the way through the race, somewhere between nine miles and the 15-kilometer mark, Joe Kurian had already opened up a lead of several minutes en route to a dominating victory margin of four minutes, 31 seconds. A few minutes after he raced past the site where Harry Whitehorse's Effigy Tree will soon be re-installed as a bronze casting, I turned on the camera to catch the next 20 pairs of legs. In between the tap of footfalls on Lakeland Avenue, I listened to the birds in the trees.