Doug Wingate's Staging Area

The race scenery is amazing, the course is challenging and it’s a race I’d consider doing again if a few minor fixes occurred. I ran the 50K and it does include a few challenging hills – Bare Hill Rd specifically. It brought my pace down from about a 6:45 to an 8:45 for the one-mile uphill stretch.
The recommendation I would make would be that turns need to be better marked than simply painting arrows on the road. A few orange cones or yard signs w/ arrows to help indicate turns would be good. There were no pace/guide bikes out front as was mentioned on their social page also. With running the 50K that meant the 50 miler runners merged with us as we went up the lake and aid stations were really lacking in nutrients, at least as I passed. I saw photos from the early stages of the 50 miler with fully stocked tables with food/drinks but as the last 25ish miles went by those tables had next to nothing, only water or electrolyte shot glass sized cups. It wasn’t a burden for us 50K-ers but the 50 milers probably desperately were hoping for more as the race went on. I enjoyed the race but there is room to improve the experience for runners on the course, hopefully they make some small tweaks in future races.