LATEST NEWS

11/07/07: The race went off as planned and seemed to work well. 60 registered, 50 started, 20 finished. Mens & women's course records were established by Mike Dobies & Barbara Hitzfeld. Next years date was set at Nov 1st, 2008. Same format. This is a 100mi race, so any idea that this was a 75mi or 50mi race was dropped. I gave out rocks to the top 75mi and 50mi runners who were at the ceremony, but most who had not run the entire distance had already left. I bought 60 buckles, so I already have enough to use for next year. It will obviously be the same buckle. Timing went smoothly and the results are posted. Medical was a non-issue. The medical staff had nothing to do. We never ran out of water. Ice ran low once. We over-marked the turns to an extreme because we had no intention of marking anything but the turns. Of course this left a few long stretches with no turns. Those who attended the briefing understood this and were fine with it, but those who missed the briefing, felt the marking less than perfect. maybe if they had attended the briefing they would have felt otherwise, but that is the way it was done and will continue to be done. It allowed me and my wife with a few friends to set up and tear down the entire course in a much more timely manner. And from the majority of the runners, seemed to work well. I created a whiner's time out cage and although we did have a few people who should have gone in for some time, I never did manage to get them in. I need to put more emphasis on reading the REQUIRED READING document before next year. This is a full blown 100 mile trail race. Only thing missing is that we are not supplying the food or the volunteers to hand it out. Runners must bring their own support staff, if they want it. Some did, most didn't. Some people appreciated the solitude of coming into a station to rest and replenish without the chaos of over-attentive volunteers. They actually got to rest at the rest stations. This aint a carbon copy of all the other 100 milers out there. It aint the same format and wasn't intended to be. It was designed for veteran trail runners who know how to take care of themselves and still be able to do it during a timed event. I intend to leave it as it is. I do not intend to staff the aid stations and supply the food. We shall ride this horse for awhile.

10/30/07: The race is ready. I have the buckles & the shirts. 55 people have signed up. The weather looks great. Its looking like a perfect weekend. I am driving to the park in the morning and will be out of touch until you arrive. You can still sign up at the race site.

09/16/07: Finally, I have a belt buckle design. But damn was it expensive. I am very impressed with the look. It is not a flat 2-D design but more of what they call 3-D. It is the most I have ever paid for a finishers buckle but figured that if anybody finished this beast, then they deserved the best I could come up with. There you have it. Its a beaut!

09/15/07: The finish time appears to make the race look like 35 hours instead of 36 hours, but.. during the race, we pass thru the time change from Daylight Savings, which means that at 2am on Sunday, we drop back to 1am. This should play heck with your own run time calculations, but for us, its all about the running clock time which starts at 0:00:00 when you start at 5:00am and stops 36 hours later at 4:00am.

09/06/07: Our route & mapping guru (Chris Matus) has created a new map link to a route mapping site with the 25mi course on it. Its close but not exact. He cannnot possibly see every nuance of the trail, so the distance on this map is not exactly corerct, but it is pretty close. Plusm you can zoon in and change to Hybrid mode to see the terrain features. Very nice.

09/05/07: I have decided to change the direction of the course after each loop (to keep you from getting too bored. So this means... Loop1 cw, Loop2 ccw, Loop3 cw, Loop4 ccw