This is my second year doing this race as I also did it in 2021 so that review has more details. This is one of the toughest 4 milers you … MORE
This is my second year doing this race as I also did it in 2021 so that review has more details. This is one of the toughest 4 milers you will find. It is a Friday evening trail race in Mendon Ponds Park. It is produced by Yellow Jacket Racing. They produce good races but this is one of my least favorites given the technicality and June heat. This year it was super hot and close to 90 degrees. I got my packet right before the race at the race site but you can also get it earlier at the store. Packet includes a nice but very neon yellow shirt. The race logo is pretty cool. That’s the only swag item but it’s fair for the price. This year some production elements were better and some were worse. What was better is it was chip timed with a mass start. What was worse is the course was not very well marked. I was surprised by this. The dirt cheap race I did with the same company last week was super well marked but today there were long stretches without flags. I also saw a runner miss a turn luckily she wasn’t far ahead so I was able to let her know she went the wrong way. The course was the same (or very similar) crazy hard course as last time that is more like 4.5 miles than 4 miles. You have the option for a 4 miler or do 2 loops for 8 miles. I would only recommend the 8 mile if you are very experienced at trails. Knowing how hard the race is I did the 4 miler. Since it was 90 degrees I decided to just hike this race. My time was slow since I was just hiking and also spent some time chatting with another runner but I finished. There were hot dogs including veggie dogs at the end along with coke and some bags of veggie chips and popcorn. If you like really, tough trail I’d recommend this race but I do hope they mark it better in the future. Usually Yellow Jacket Racing does a great job marking their trails so I’m not sure what went wrong. Since I am moving out of Rochester I will definitely not be doing this race again. I will not miss it that much.
Please login to reply to this review.
Not as Well-Marked as It Should Be
This is my second year doing this race as I also did it in 2021 so that review has more details. This is one of the toughest 4 milers you … MORE
This is my second year doing this race as I also did it in 2021 so that review has more details. This is one of the toughest 4 milers you will find. It is a Friday evening trail race in Mendon Ponds Park. It is produced by Yellow Jacket Racing. They produce good races but this is one of my least favorites given the technicality and June heat. This year it was super hot and close to 90 degrees. I got my packet right before the race at the race site but you can also get it earlier at the store. Packet includes a nice but very neon yellow shirt. The race logo is pretty cool. That’s the only swag item but it’s fair for the price. This year some production elements were better and some were worse. What was better is it was chip timed with a mass start. What was worse is the course was not very well marked. I was surprised by this. The dirt cheap race I did with the same company last week was super well marked but today there were long stretches without flags. I also saw a runner miss a turn luckily she wasn’t far ahead so I was able to let her know she went the wrong way. The course was the same (or very similar) crazy hard course as last time that is more like 4.5 miles than 4 miles. You have the option for a 4 miler or do 2 loops for 8 miles. I would only recommend the 8 mile if you are very experienced at trails. Knowing how hard the race is I did the 4 miler. Since it was 90 degrees I decided to just hike this race. My time was slow since I was just hiking and also spent some time chatting with another runner but I finished. There were hot dogs including veggie dogs at the end along with coke and some bags of veggie chips and popcorn. If you like really, tough trail I’d recommend this race but I do hope they mark it better in the future. Usually Yellow Jacket Racing does a great job marking their trails so I’m not sure what went wrong. Since I am moving out of Rochester I will definitely not be doing this race again. I will not miss it that much.
Slow Start to the Weekend
This is a Friday evening trail race produced by Yellow Jacket Racing that takes place at Mendon Ponds Park which has some nice and tough trails. You have the option … MORE
This is a Friday evening trail race produced by Yellow Jacket Racing that takes place at Mendon Ponds Park which has some nice and tough trails. You have the option of a 4 mile or 8 mile race. The 8 miler is 2 loops of the 4 mile and they allow you to drop down if you didn’t realize how hard they would make this course. I was on call this week so chose the shorter 4 miler. That was the correct choice as this course was brutal. I will write a caveat to this review that it has been an exceptionally busy week at work and I am very sleep deprived right now and it was also really hot out so I wasn’t really in the mood for a tough race but I’m trying to run 100 races this year so couldn’t say no to a local Friday race. Packet pick-up was the day before at the store. Packet included a T-shirt. it is just a cotton T-shirt but the design is cool with neon skeleton logo and its a nice forest green. This race also had a rolling start from 5pm to 6pm. Not the most exciting but convenient for being on call. I was driving in near the beginning of the race and it seemed at the start it was probably more exciting with lot of runners but by the time I parked and got ready it was the middle so a little anti-climatic. Mendon is a fun but tough place to run but this course was a little much especially for my current mood. The first 0.5 mile was mostly on grass which isn’t my favorite but it was at least relatively flat. The rest is through trails and is more fun but the hills are insane. I run at Mendon just about every week and I didn’t even know these hills existed. One of the downhills was even harder than the uphill. My Garmin had about 600 feet of elevation gain total. There were a lot of rocks, roots and horse poop to maneuver around as an added challenge. The trail is quite pretty. I was sad I didn’t see any of my deer friends on the trail like I usually do but I saw them on my drive out. Just a heads up the course is long and was about 4.5 miles but I have no right to complain about a long course after my rant about the short course at Virginia Wine Country half marathon. I really didn’t care that it was long, it’s just a heads up and they describe this as 4ish miles not exactly 4 miles. Ugh the end is again on grass to the finish line. Again the RDs know me so I got a personal cheer and a bag of goodies including a nutrigrain bar, crackers and chips so I can replenish my snack supply. In the past I think there had been medals but there weren’t this year which is fine since since they did not say there would be a medal this year and I don’t need a medal for every cheap, short race. It was also manually timed. But timing seemed precise. The times aren’t listed yet so I don’t know how accurate they were but I assume they are accurate based on YJR’s usual attention to detail. But I was super, slow since I was tired and hot and I wouldn’t mind if my official terrible time doesn’t get published. I think if it were 10 degrees cooler and I got 5 more hours of sleep this week and my deer friends showed up on the course, this might have been a 4 sneaker race. It was well produced and very well marked. It wasn’t my favorite race but I would do this again if I were in town since it’s a Friday night so not competing with other races. But I also wouldn’t stay in town for this race Friday night if there was a race I wanted to travel to that was several hours away on Saturday.