Dances With Dirt Gnaw Bone
Nashville, IN
- 50 Miler, 50 Mile Relay, 50K, Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K, 5K
- Trail (Unpaved)
- Official race website
For those of you unfamiliar with Brown County, Indiana, the terrain will bring you shock and awe! Vicious 600’ ridges, breathtaking natural beauty and wicked trails abound. Gnaw Bone is about one mile out of Nashville, IN, an artisan community with over 200 galleries. A picture postcard of a town … MORE
Local Historical Weather (May 16):
| 2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | |
| H (°F) | 75 | 84 | 75 | 66 | 77 |
| L (°F) | 61 | 65 | 57 | 59 | 56 |
Find Nearby Lodging (hotel, rental, etc.):
If races were steaks...
When you go out to eat a steak, you can walk into a restaurant, order a medium, have served and eat it...it's easy, quick, cheap, and pretty tasty. Or you … MORE
When you go out to eat a steak, you can walk into a restaurant, order a medium, have served and eat it…it’s easy, quick, cheap, and pretty tasty. Or you can drive out to a farm, ask a farmer for a steak, he’ll walk you to the pasture where you can select your cow, he’ll give you a gun to shoot it with, you can break it down and butcher it, select the exact piece of meat you want, cut it, start a fire and let it cook down to coals, throw the piece of meat on for just the right amount of time, sit down on a bench beside the fire and eat it off of a stick – and after all of that, it’s probably going to taste about like the other one, you just went through a lot more money, time, and energy to get it. That’s kind of how this 50k is, at the end it feels about like every other 50k, but it’s a lot more time and effort. Anyway, here’s the breakdown.
Overall rating: Good.
Course Difficulty: This course was about 60-70% in hardness compared to other ultras I’ve done. If it were wet, it would be really slick with many (10-12) creek crossings. Lots of roots (not as bad as Rocky Raccoon) and lots of big hills. Some of the time we were off trail entirely…so there’s that.
Course scenery: Who knows. I suppose it was probably good, but if you took your eyes off of the trail you were going down. It was almost all shade and hardwood surroundings.
Race Production: Great.
Well marked, started on time, and good aid. There were a few times that I had to stop and look for markers, they were there, I just couldn’t see them through the brush. Many of the aid station workers had either done the course or helped mark it, which made them extremely knowledgeable when questions came up.
Race Swag: The medal and post race meal were good, but the shirts, stickers, etc were add-ons at this one.
My Performance: It was ok, I was expecting it to be much harder (and it could have been). Had a few niggles here and there, but mostly, I’m just getting old, lol. All in all, I was happy with the outcome.
Final notes: This is a challenging course, a little harder than average, but with the generous cutoff time, is very doable. If you aren’t sure about trail running, this one has everything I have encountered except alligators up to your @$$ (Blackwater 50k), and high altitude (Estes Epic). It will be a good indicator of whether or not you are going to be a trail runner.
Good luck!