They go to the forest and run till they drop. Robbie Smith doesn't look like he just ran forty-three miles. It's high noon and the late spring sun is cooking Horseman's Park, a grassy meadow surrounded by pine trees in southeastern Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine State Forest.
Several horsemen trot their elegant beasts on a dirt loop.
He doesn't bend over with dry heaves, like one unfortunate man with a fiery sunburn. As effortlessly as the circling horses, on legs that have carried him forty-three miles, Smith heads off to run the final seven. This year, Smith is one of about 500 participants - lawyers, doctors, college students, parole officers from Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, even South Dakota. The course wends back and forth along a small segment of the Ice Age Trail, a variously rocky, hilly, sandy ribbon running through forest and over rolling moraines formed thousands of years ago by glacial deposits. Many IAT 50 participants have run marathons.