Dirt Cheap Trail Race Mendon
Henrietta, NY
- 4.5 Miler
- Trail (Unpaved)
- Official race website
Since 2008, this super-cool, mid-week, low-key, fun trail race series highlights different parks around Monroe County! Dirt Cheap Trail Race was a brainchild of YellowJacket Racing in 2008 right after the stock market crash. People were in tricky spots financially and we wanted to provide an economical avenue for people … MORE
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The Dirt Cheap Race series is a series of challenging 4 to 5 mile trail races held in different parks in the Rochester Area. Usually the series is held from … MORE
The Dirt Cheap Race series is a series of challenging 4 to 5 mile trail races held in different parks in the Rochester Area. Usually the series is held from late spring to late summer/early fall on Wednesday evenings. However this year Yellow Jacket Racing (YJR) decided to add some Fall weekend dirt cheap races since a few spring/summer ones didn’t get made up and these are some of the easier races to hold during covid. I was very happy to get the chance to run 2 more of these races. As the name implies these are dirt cheap. They are under $20 and as a result no swag (there is a T-shirt for the series) but you get a well-produced, fun and challenging trail race. The logistics of this race were similar to ROCtoberfest with groups of about 40 runners based on sign up time starting every 15 minutes. This course was also held at Mendon which is a great place for trail running. However Yellow Jacket Racing switched it up and did a very different course than the last dirt cheap I did. This course didn’t have the obstacles of the other one. There was no mud, stairs to climb or logs to go over or under but man there were a lot of hills. While Mendon is hilly I have no idea how they found this many hills. Most of it was on the East Esker trail which is my usual trail for hill training however there were quite a few parts that took small side trails I didn’t know existed to lead to more hills. Very impressed with how they made this course and found these hills. Although it was quite cruel. The hills were so steep that even the really fast trail runners who passed me from later waves were walking them. The trail was extremely well marked as expected from a YJR event which was appreciated since this race took us on some off the beaten path trails. Mendon was beautiful right now with the leaves changing color. I think this is a better time of year for this race than the spring/summer. At the finish line you get a bag of food but no other swag which is fine since the race is dirt cheap. These races are a lot of fun but very challenging. YJR goes out of their way to make the courses as hard as possible and I was definitely right about this being more technical than yesterday. You definitely want trail shoes for this one. You are only going to do well if you are an experienced trail runner but the course is short enough you would enjoy if you weren’t as long as you don’t set expectations for time. They also don’t give a map or elevation profile but that is intentional to surprise you with all the challenges on the course. I was happy I was a little faster than the first dirt cheap although much slower than yesterday. Although I actually thought the first dirt cheap course was a little more fun and this one was a little excessive with the hills. Looking forward to another one in 2 weeks!