This was my first trail run longer than about 6km. It was a lot to bite off, but it was doable. The first loop (15km outer trail) is much smoother … MORE
This was my first trail run longer than about 6km. It was a lot to bite off, but it was doable. The first loop (15km outer trail) is much smoother going than the second (10km inner trail). If I had the option of running in a different order, I’d make the smaller loop the first section for anyone 25km+ (except this brave 50km souls): I believe it would have improved my overall time. I locked up pretty bad around 19km, which was just past the 2nd peak. That made the last 6 quite difficult.
The people were great and there was lots of energy. I signed up very last minute (at the starting line), but it was easy to do. I had also emailed the organizers that morning and got a response fairly quickly, confirming they had spots.
Beautiful scenery, and the second loop was mostly just alone with the sights and sounds of running through the desert, after dark (not a bad thing).
All of the racers were awesome, friendly, and encouraging. Good people.
After the run was completed, they had a DJ set up, a decent recovery tent, and a beer garden. The energy was great, and it looked like a decent after-party. Sadly, for various reasons, I couldn’t stick around long to really enjoy this. A note on this: the race takes place in a regional park, with camping spaces. If you sign up beforehand, you may be able to snag a spot, which would make enjoying the festivities, scenery and experience far easier.
The swag: I liked that the shirts weren’t that Tek material as it stinks as soon as I start to sweat (which is pretty quickly). I didn’t like the “medal”… I’m not enjoying what appears to be a trend towards wooden, cricut style medals… I feel this detracts from the perceived value of the finisher medal. I would have also like to have seen some different designs for different distances/challenges. I did like that they also offered a glass, but it would have been better to offer both, considering the state or the medal. The beer garden and DJ were awesome; my only complaint is that there was no free beer for finishers. That was a fail in my opinion.
Overall, this was a pretty great experience: the trail was interesting and had some challenges, the scenery was cool, the people were awesome, and the swag was tolerable.
I’ll probably run this again next year.
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Fun Race On An Interesting Trail
This was my first trail run longer than about 6km. It was a lot to bite off, but it was doable. The first loop (15km outer trail) is much smoother … MORE
This was my first trail run longer than about 6km. It was a lot to bite off, but it was doable. The first loop (15km outer trail) is much smoother going than the second (10km inner trail). If I had the option of running in a different order, I’d make the smaller loop the first section for anyone 25km+ (except this brave 50km souls): I believe it would have improved my overall time. I locked up pretty bad around 19km, which was just past the 2nd peak. That made the last 6 quite difficult.
The people were great and there was lots of energy. I signed up very last minute (at the starting line), but it was easy to do. I had also emailed the organizers that morning and got a response fairly quickly, confirming they had spots.
Beautiful scenery, and the second loop was mostly just alone with the sights and sounds of running through the desert, after dark (not a bad thing).
All of the racers were awesome, friendly, and encouraging. Good people.
After the run was completed, they had a DJ set up, a decent recovery tent, and a beer garden. The energy was great, and it looked like a decent after-party. Sadly, for various reasons, I couldn’t stick around long to really enjoy this. A note on this: the race takes place in a regional park, with camping spaces. If you sign up beforehand, you may be able to snag a spot, which would make enjoying the festivities, scenery and experience far easier.
The swag: I liked that the shirts weren’t that Tek material as it stinks as soon as I start to sweat (which is pretty quickly). I didn’t like the “medal”… I’m not enjoying what appears to be a trend towards wooden, cricut style medals… I feel this detracts from the perceived value of the finisher medal. I would have also like to have seen some different designs for different distances/challenges. I did like that they also offered a glass, but it would have been better to offer both, considering the state or the medal. The beer garden and DJ were awesome; my only complaint is that there was no free beer for finishers. That was a fail in my opinion.
Overall, this was a pretty great experience: the trail was interesting and had some challenges, the scenery was cool, the people were awesome, and the swag was tolerable.
I’ll probably run this again next year.