....or their other name, which is less polite. These are the last three hills that come in the last few miles. These things put the KC Marathon or Hospital Hill's … MORE
….or their other name, which is less polite. These are the last three hills that come in the last few miles. These things put the KC Marathon or Hospital Hill’s hills to shame. I do a lot of hill work, and my prior job had hill work as a big component of it. These were rough. The hills earlier which had ropes tied into trees to use in case of mud were not easy, but the ones at the end could really suck the motivation out of ya.
The shirt is a long sleeved, quarter-zip tech shirt. Simple bright red, no sponsors, just a 3×4″ name and logo of the race on the left breast. I’d actually wear this shirt around town, and not because it’s laundry day. I wish I’d bought two actually.
The race is on a 10-mile loop with 1300 feet of elevation gain. Do it once, twice, or three times. I only did the 10-mile because I’m recovering from a knee injury and the 34lbs I was carrying was going to get real heavy with the rough knee.
That said, here comes my only complaint: the medals shown online are apparently only for the 20 and 30 miler. The 10 miler gets a completely different medal that’s just a wood coin with the race name burned on it, strung to a piece of yarn. Honestly, it feels cheap for an $80-something dollar race when I got a nearly identical medal at a $18-dollar race last year for a local high school. Since the tagline of the race is Run, Toto Run! The (other) medal has a little black dog on it. I collect medals with critters on it (suggestions welcome!), so while I wanted to do the race anyway because it is so famous here, I really wanted the little black dog one. Despite the knee, I could have easily done 20 miles without the body armor and kit (or 10 and 10…whatever) and get the medal I thought I was going to get, but since the 10-mile medal wasn’t shown anywhere on the website, I assumed we were all getting the same (maybe different size and ribbon). Nope. No critter medal for me. I would have given 3 shoes for the swag except the shirt is so nice. Production lost a shoe for lack of specification on the website, but the chilli set up at the end was a nice touch. That said, the website said regular and vegetarian chilli, and there was only one pot of regular. I’m not vegetarian, so didn’t bother me, but it did seem unfortunate that something else on the website could use some updating.
The aide stations were 4 I believe (one you hit twice, before and after a loop). They were all well stocked with gatorade, nutella/tortilla rollups, M&Ms, some kind (ham?) of sandwich, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention to them since I was only doing 10 miles and I had gummies and potato chips in my kit which was fine for what I was doing. I did see enough to know there was a very extensive selection well beyond what I named here. All the volunteers were motivated and friendly and it was probably the best marked trail race I’ve ever been in. They had arrows and “wrong way” signs up at every intersection, some things that might have been intersections, and one or two things that looked like a good place to put an intersection but never made it. Seriously, they made it real clear where you’re going. Great job on that to all the great people at Trail Nerds, who gained a new follower today.
52 weeks from now I’m going to be back to get my little black dog medal.
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Hold off for the Three Sisters
....or their other name, which is less polite. These are the last three hills that come in the last few miles. These things put the KC Marathon or Hospital Hill's … MORE
….or their other name, which is less polite. These are the last three hills that come in the last few miles. These things put the KC Marathon or Hospital Hill’s hills to shame. I do a lot of hill work, and my prior job had hill work as a big component of it. These were rough. The hills earlier which had ropes tied into trees to use in case of mud were not easy, but the ones at the end could really suck the motivation out of ya.
The shirt is a long sleeved, quarter-zip tech shirt. Simple bright red, no sponsors, just a 3×4″ name and logo of the race on the left breast. I’d actually wear this shirt around town, and not because it’s laundry day. I wish I’d bought two actually.
The race is on a 10-mile loop with 1300 feet of elevation gain. Do it once, twice, or three times. I only did the 10-mile because I’m recovering from a knee injury and the 34lbs I was carrying was going to get real heavy with the rough knee.
That said, here comes my only complaint: the medals shown online are apparently only for the 20 and 30 miler. The 10 miler gets a completely different medal that’s just a wood coin with the race name burned on it, strung to a piece of yarn. Honestly, it feels cheap for an $80-something dollar race when I got a nearly identical medal at a $18-dollar race last year for a local high school. Since the tagline of the race is Run, Toto Run! The (other) medal has a little black dog on it. I collect medals with critters on it (suggestions welcome!), so while I wanted to do the race anyway because it is so famous here, I really wanted the little black dog one. Despite the knee, I could have easily done 20 miles without the body armor and kit (or 10 and 10…whatever) and get the medal I thought I was going to get, but since the 10-mile medal wasn’t shown anywhere on the website, I assumed we were all getting the same (maybe different size and ribbon). Nope. No critter medal for me. I would have given 3 shoes for the swag except the shirt is so nice. Production lost a shoe for lack of specification on the website, but the chilli set up at the end was a nice touch. That said, the website said regular and vegetarian chilli, and there was only one pot of regular. I’m not vegetarian, so didn’t bother me, but it did seem unfortunate that something else on the website could use some updating.
The aide stations were 4 I believe (one you hit twice, before and after a loop). They were all well stocked with gatorade, nutella/tortilla rollups, M&Ms, some kind (ham?) of sandwich, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention to them since I was only doing 10 miles and I had gummies and potato chips in my kit which was fine for what I was doing. I did see enough to know there was a very extensive selection well beyond what I named here. All the volunteers were motivated and friendly and it was probably the best marked trail race I’ve ever been in. They had arrows and “wrong way” signs up at every intersection, some things that might have been intersections, and one or two things that looked like a good place to put an intersection but never made it. Seriously, they made it real clear where you’re going. Great job on that to all the great people at Trail Nerds, who gained a new follower today.
52 weeks from now I’m going to be back to get my little black dog medal.
A fantastic early season trail run
I've run this race twice and will be doing it again in 2020. My hope is to run it every year, because it is that great! The course is a … MORE
I’ve run this race twice and will be doing it again in 2020. My hope is to run it every year, because it is that great!
The course is a 10 mile horse trail around Wyandotte Lake County Park (or is it Wyandott County Lake Park…I can never keep that straight). You run it once, twice, or three times depending on the race. The two years I’ve run it the course has been brutal with rivers of cold, sloppy mud, or cold slushy mud. I hear it can be dry and fast as well. Mud aside, the course is challenging though not to the point that it should scare anyone off. Some may give it a higher course difficulty rating but I’d put it right in the middle of what I’ve run.
Ben Holmes, the RD, and his band of volunteers doing a fantastic job with this race. There are four well staffed, and well stocked, aid stations on the 10 mile loop. I spend far too much time at these aid stations because the people and food there are great…and they often offer shots of fireball or other booze 😉
Post race, the chili is kick ass! They may run out of the good beer though, so run fast. Great race swag too. Love my hoodie! Unless you are in the 50K you have to take the shuttle from a church parking lot, but no worries, the parking is easy there and the shuttles swing through frequently.
If you’re looking for a great February trail race, this is it!