Upstate Ultra is presenting its annual Knock on Woodstock Ultra Series held at a Pleasant Ridge in Marietta, South Carolina. These particular events will be held on a 5-mile loop that wraps around the entire Camp Spearhead which is home to year long camps for children with disabilities. It is …
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Upstate Ultra is presenting its annual Knock on Woodstock Ultra Series held at a Pleasant Ridge in Marietta, South Carolina. These particular events will be held on a 5-mile loop that wraps around the entire Camp Spearhead which is home to year long camps for children with disabilities.
It is our goal to aid any and all runners willing to accept this challenge with a fully stock station at the start of the loop with several bathrooms, access to crew stations, food vendors, music, entertainment and an encouraging hand! This race welcomes ALL! I encourage you to grab a friend and come out and view what the beautiful park and Greenville County has to offer! Proceeds will go directly to Camp Spearhead along with any donations you would be willing to supply this camp for their needs throughout the calendar year.
Knock on Woodstock Course
The Knock on Woodstock Ultra course is a 5-mile looped course on single track trails (95% Trail). The course has a single aid station and a starting point at our park headquarters. The start and finish loop is also located near our aid station, tent area for and cabin rentals. The course has 450 feet of gain per 5 mile loop and is generally wide and rolling. There is shade over 90% of the trail and the park will be closed for our race only! The course will have a series of directional arrows that will be placed at all intersections. Please follow all directional arrows to stay on course. In the event that you make a wrong turn please backtrack to your original spot of confusion. Cutting the course (even if unintentionally) will lead to a disqualification.
Course Cut Off
Each race has a cutoff of 8am on Sunday. All runners who need to stop their race for whatever reason before finishing please return your chip tag to someone at the timing table and indicate that you are pulling out of the event. We allow individuals to drop from one event to another to receive a finishers award to that distance. For example all 100 milers who complete at least a 50k distance can drop to the 50k event result list. No overall awards will be given in the event that you place in the top 3 for the simple reason you did not compete during the 50k time frame.
Aid Stations
There will be one aid station per the 5 mile loop. Items may include: pickles, cookies, chips, Little Debbie snacks, assorted candy, chicken/veggie broth, fig newtons, & pretzels. Liquids will include water, Tailwind Nutrition, coke, and ginger ale. If you would like to donate an aid station supply of something that we do not offer or that is homemade feel free! This is a cup-less event so runners are required to carry a hydration vessel if they will need fluids during the race.
LESS
Very runnable…very technical.
Overall Rating: Excellent! Course Difficulty: This course is a 5ish mile loop, run 6 times for the 50k. While runnable and technical generally don’t belong together, this is not a … MORE
Overall Rating: Excellent!
Course Difficulty: This course is a 5ish mile loop, run 6 times for the 50k. While runnable and technical generally don’t belong together, this is not a rock picking high stepping kind of technical, it’s more of “you are going to go fast, and you are going to trip and fall kind of technical! I tripped and fell more on this course than all of my other races combined. 100’s of trips!!! While I guess that’s par for the course on something called Knocking on Woodstock, it’s a different kind of tripping than they were doing back then. Here’s a nursery rhyme I wrote on the third loop:
I fell while running
I fell while walking
I fell while quiet
I fell while talking
Sometimes I fell up
Sometimes I fell down
But no matter the fall
I ended up on the ground
The roots were like fingers
Grabbing my toes
The rocks like a fighter
Delivering blows
I laid on the ground
looking up through the trees
Assessing the fresh scrapes on my knees
I mumbled to myself
I’m too old for this
But I was halfway done
So I got up and finished
lol…anyway.
Course scenery: All shade and beautiful SC scenery. Couple of stream crossings (on bridges) that were really pretty.
Race Production: Outstanding. Everything was where it was supposed to be and when it was supposed to be there. Pre-race communication was sparse, but there were no surprises. The RD was on site the whole time, even the day/night before, which gave the three of us camping at the start line a good chance to sit and talk with him. Chip timed with one self serve aid station at the start/finish line. Tailwind and standard AS fare.
Race Swag: Good. No t-shirt, but a custom finish woodallion and race company socks, stickers, etc.
My Performance: Ok. This could be a very fast course, as long as you don’t get discouraged by trips and falls or your gps being off (it will be short). Finish time was right where it should have been on this course.
Final notes: This is an excellent race, with excellent production. There was a nice depth of field with lots of experienced ultra runners and fewer first timers than several of my previous races; it was a very friendly running community. Something else I found interesting, is that in all the trips and falls with all the runners, I didn’t hear one foul word all day. I know that doesn’t mean anything to most people, but it is the culture I was raised in, where you just don’t use profanity; it was honestly quite refreshing. This is a good SC race, with an RD and volunteers that care about the runners and the integrity of the event. Go give it a shot.