I just ran at the Pineland Farms Trail Running Festival. It is 2 days of racing out at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester, Maine. If you’re looking for a good first ultra, this is definitely one that you might want to look at.

It’s a challenging course. It’s a lot more deceptive than the max and min total elevation would make you think, but there’s nothing really very flat anywhere on the course; you’re constantly either going up, or you’re going down, and it does make a big difference.

It takes its toll on your body, but there’s great support. There are multiple aid stations, some of which you go by 2-3 times per loop. You never go more than 2 or 3 miles without hitting an aid station. If you want to carry your own water, it’s easy enough to get it refilled along the way, and if you don’t want to carry water, it’s not an ultra-marathon where you’re required to have everything on your back.

Along with the great support, it’s just really well-organized. There’s a barbeque each day for the race participants. Smuttynose has been coming up and providing a beer tent. The prizes are great! You get cowbells at the finish. So for example, I ran the 50K, so I got a Pineland Farms Cowbell, which was a lot of fun, beause once I finished I was able to cheer people on by ringing the cowbell. Even when I have it around my neck, I can just breathe in and out and be ringing the bell for people which was really fun.

For me personally, it was a good weekend hardware-wise. I started out on Saturday. There’s a 10K, a canicross 5K (where you run tied to your dog,) a regular 5k and then they have a barefoot 5k.

Last year, I ran it completely barefoot, I finished third overall, and I was not beat by anyone wearing shoes on the day. This year, I decided that because I was running the 50K race the next day that I wanted to run in the shod division. I have some homemade huaraches, so I ran wearing those. I managed to be 2nd overall this year, and I finished in 1st in the shod division. I was beat by one completely barefoot person. So I got my first award.

And then on Sunday, I ran the 50 kilometer race, which starts 2 hours after the 50 milers go off.

The 50 milers begin at 6am, the 50K runners start at 8am, and then the 25K starts at 10am. My whole race strategy was to get through the first 25K loop before the 25K race started, because I didn’t want to have to deal with any crowding on the trails.

It worked out really well! I went through about a minute and a half to 2 minutes before the 25K started. It was the earliest I’d ever been caught by a 25K runner. 2 years ago when I ran the 50K, it took about 15, 16 kilometers before the first 25K runner caught me. I’d gone through about 15 minutes before the race started, so I had a much bigger lead. Even last year, when I ran the 25K, I was still right up in the lead near a mile. And today… Or yesterday rather, the first 25K runner, he caught me within the first kilometer of that 2nd loop I was running and just went zooming by. He wasn’t slowing down for anything.

But as the top 10 or 12 runners came by me, the first 3 miles of the course are pretty much downhill, so that kind of plays to my strength. So I was actually zooming past the 25K runners, and then they would catch me while I walked up the next uphill, and then I would zoom past them again. So that went on for about 2 or 3 miles before they had pulled off enough that I started looking for other people to run with.

I spent most of the race running by myself, but a lot of that is because I was running in somewhere between 4th and 6th place for almost the entire race. In fact, when I finished, I thought that I was in 4th place, until I was waiting for my wife to finish the 25K and I saw one of the guys that I thought had beaten me come running in to finish. Apparently, while I was running with the 25K runners down one of those hills in the 2nd loop around mile 18 or so, I had just zoomed by him and hadn’t even noticed. So that was a pleasant surprise.

I wound up with 3rd place overall for the 50K race, so I got my second plaque. And then that 3rd place was a good start for our four-person teams; you can have more than 4 people. We had 6 on our 50K team. But Trail Monster Running, who I was running for, managed to win the 50K team division as well. So along with that, we also won the 25K team division. So we got 2 out of 3 of the team awards on Sunday, which was pretty nice. The Trail Monsters were 3rd overall in the 50 mile race, but we did have a full team for all of the races. Full team plus there were more than enough people for each race. So it was a great turnout by the Trail Monsters. There were about twelve hundred runners, between all of the races this weekend. And I can’t wait for next year. It’s always a fun event.

So if you’re looking for a place to vacation for your Memorial Day weekend, there’s a good atmosphere around the Pineland Farms races. You can bring your kids. They have egg-tosses, and three-legged races and other kid-friendly on the Saturday, so I highly recommend coming up!

If you want to know more about Pineland Farms, then you can check out the website, at PinelandFarms.com. If you want to see more race reports just like this one, then just subscribe to my YouTube Channel, or visit RuntoWin.com, and you can look up any of the reports from previous races that I’ve run.