Run to Win

I have wanted to take part in the Pineland Farms Trail Challenge for the past few years, but since it is on Memorial Day Weekend and I am rarely home I haven’t been able to until this year. I can now see why everybody raves about how great it is.

This is a tough race. It is made up of 25 kilometer loops, where runners can run 1 loop (25k), 2 loops (50k) or a 3½ mile mini-loop and then 3 full loops (50 mile).

There are a lot of turns (click map above for PDF download.) The course is very easy to follow, with plenty of surveyor’s flags and arrows pointing which way to go. When in doubt, you always turn left and can’t go too far wrong.

There are a couple of short but very steep downhills each loop, but otherwise there isn’t anything that individually would seem very difficult. However, you can never rest on this course. You are always climbing or descending; there are no flat sections to this course at all: (Click here to continue reading…)

Update: Click here for the 2007 race results of both the 50k and the 23k.
The Pisgah 50k Mountain Trail Race was this past Sunday, September 9, 2007. I really enjoyed the experience and will provide a few details about the race now that I’ve had a few days to think about the whole thing. The other day, I talked about what led up to the race and covered what happened before the gun went off. Today I’d like to talk about the race itself.

The Starting Line at Pisgah

The start of the race was scheduled for 8:45 a.m. At 8:43 a.m. it began to rain again. The race was pretty low tech, so the start consisted of a couple of stopwatches and some voice commands. As much as I love the Maine Track Club’s cannon, it was nice to not be deafened at the start of the race.

A bunch of 23k runners were clustered at the front of the starting line. The crowd of them took off with the “gun” (also known as somebody yelling “Go!”) and hurried to the front of the pack. I hung back a little since this was a new experience for me from both a trail racing perspective and a distance perspective.

The Start at Pisgah

The first mile or so was along paved roads which rolled steadily up towards some carriage roads. Once you got onto the carriage roads, there was a steep descent to get onto the trail itself. The drop was probably about 400 feet over the span of a third of a mile or so.
(Click here to continue reading…)