The 2016 Eastern Divide Ultra 50k

A view looking west toward West Virginia

Wow! The Eastern Divide Ultra 50k exceeded my expectations in every imaginable way.

So what are some of the things that impressed me?

1. A great location. The race is held in the mountains near Pembroke VA, about a half hour drive west of Blacksburg. Take Route 460 West and turn right on Mountain Lake Rd., travel about six twisty miles up to Mountain Lake Lodge and follow the signs to the parking area.

Course map

2. An interesting course. You can tell the creators of this event put a lot of thought into the course. It felt like they tried to share all of their favorite trails in one awesome race. There was zero pavement.

I really like races like this that are point-to-point. No looping past a start/finish line multiple times. It makes it much easier to focus on your goal of finishing.

We parked our cars at the finish and took a somewhat hair-raising school bus ride over the mountain and down to the starting line at The Cascades parking area.

Elevation Profile

3. A challenging course. I read there was 6,500 ft. of climbing and 4,000 ft. of descending. I was fully prepared for the first 2,000 ft. climb up Butt Mountain. The second big climb between Aid Stations 3 and 4 kind of caught me off guard. It's a two mile straight climb with very little grade change all the way up to Wind Rock. The course has some really long gradual descents that will punish your quads. Another place that caught me off guard was the rooty, rocky, technical single track near Mountain Lake at the end of the race. I'm fairly tall and kept having to duck under trees there. I advise wearing shoes with a rock plate or a lot of cushioning due to some of the rocky areas you will encounter.

The Eastern Divide

In case you don't remember your elementary school geography, water on the east side of the Eastern Divide flows to the Atlantic Ocean; water on the west side flows to the Gulf of Mexico. 

Pre-race briefing at packet pickup

 4. Great organization. Everything was very well planned and executed. From the packet pickup at the Rising Silo Brewery the evening before in Blacksburg to the finish line cookout, everything seemed to go as planned. 

This race by far had the best trail markings of any race I have done. If you got lost it was because you just weren't paying attention.

Lined up for the start

Trail to the Cascades

Just below the Cascades

The Cascades

5. Beautiful scenery.

Aid Station #1

6. Great aid stations with great volunteers. I always wear a hydration pack to be safe, but I didn't need it at this race. Aid Station spacing was just about perfect. There was one every 4 or 5 miles. Aid Station #1 had bourbon, bacon and a banjo player. (No, I didn't sample the bourbon.) All of the aid stations had Heed, water, PB&J, candy, chips, salt tabs, etc. Aid Station #4 had watermelon. The final Aid Station had popsicles.

Fire road after the first climb

More fire road

Single track

Some scenery

A home on Mountain Lake

I would highly recommend this race to anyone looking for a fun, challenging mountain ultra. I will probably sign up again. Here is the web link to their website: http://www.easterndivideultra.com/home.html

Near Mountain Lake Lodge where the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed

Running in the Clouds, My Grayson Highlands 50k Experience

Running the 2015 Barkley Fall Classic totally rewrote the book on running for me. It made me realize how much I love running mountain trail races. Nothing else comes close. 

I signed up for the 2016 Barkley Fall Classic and immediately began looking for mountain trail races to use for BFC training. In January, I ran the South Mountains Half Marathon, which had a lot of good vertical climbing in a beautiful state park. 

Next, Marie found the Grayson Highlands 50k for me. I watched the video, saw the feral ponies, the vertical climbing, the beautiful scenery and signed up right away.

The race did not disappoint. Sean Blanton, the race director, aka the Run Bum, obviously put a lot of thought into the layout of the course. Here is a photo of him standing on his car briefing the runners.

The start

After starting, we ran about a mile down a paved road and then took a left onto some technical single track. It wasn't too long before we were climbing to the right side of this nice waterfall.

The first waterfall

Then we got on the trail to Massie Gap and saw the feral ponies. It started to become very foggy and windy at this point. The weather forecast said overnight lows would be in the 40s and the highs would be in the low 60s. I assumed the sun would come out and burn the fog off. Wrong! I forgot that mountains make their own weather. It was very foggy, windy and rainy during the first two hours of my race.

Feral ponies

While I was photographing the ponies I noticed someone photographing me. I asked if he was Sean and he said yes. I chatted with him briefly and took this selfie.

A selfie with Sean Blanton, the race director, aka the Run Bum

After photographing the ponies we were directed through a gate onto an 8 mile loop that would take us off of park property onto US Forest Service land. I caught a glimpse of a very large longhorn steer and decided to keep my distance. We had been warned that they would gore us!

By now the wind was really howling. I would guess it was 25-30 mph sustained. It was very foggy with rain mixed in. I knew I needed to keep running just to stay warm. The field had spread out and I soon found myself running alone in no man's land. There were no trees and the trail was very rocky. It was strewn with 3-6" diameter rocks which made running very difficult for me. 

Soon I realized I hadn't seen any confidence flags in quite a while.

I crossed over the Appalachian Trail (white blazes) and became disoriented in the fog. I thought I was lost and retraced my steps. Eventually, I heard voices and saw a couple of AT through-hikers through the fog. They looked like ghosts with trekking poles and backpacks. 

Finally, another runner caught up with me and said we weren't lost. I asked her if we were dead last and she said no, there were lots of people behind us. We ran together until we got to the first aid station.

Aid station #1

The aid station was shrouded in fog. I actually felt sorry for the volunteers as the weather conditions were not good.

Aid station #1- They could have used a table

They didn't have a table so the food was put on the ground. I had never seen that before. I ate a PBJ and took a baggie full of potato chips to eat while I ran on.

Longhorn cattle

I ran down what looked to be a bridle path that had become a stream due to the rain from the night before.

Muddy path

Clouds on the mountain top

Finally, the fog started to break and I could actually see some mountain views. Then out of nowhere this feral pony crossed the path. I'm sure it saw me, but it ignored me. It kind of reminded of a cat in that regard.

A feral pony that crossed the trail right in front of me

The weather went from foggy and cool to sunny and warm several times.

There were several stream crossing where I managed to get me feet wet. I really enjoyed them!

One of the many stream crossings where I got my feet wet

Eventually, I arrived at the second aid station. I was told I had 14 miles to go, a 9 mile out and back to the next aid station and then 5 miles to the finish. I set off down a very long descent toward the 3rd aid station. Runners were already coming back toward me and I realized how far back I was. No worries, I reached the 3rd aid station at about an hour under the cutoff. 

When I arrived at the 3rd aid station (mile 21) it started raining again. I was cold and had had enough. I knew what the next 4 miles would be like as I had just traveled them. I also knew the visitor center was just a couple of miles of hiking up the main road, so I announced that I was dropping there. The aid station volunteers were very surprised and asked me if they should try to encourage me to keep going. I told them no, I knew I could finish, but I just didn't feel like it. 

There was nothing wrong with me. I knew we had about a 6 hour drive ahead of us to get home. I called Marie and told her I was hiking up to the visitor center. A park ranger came by and gave me a ride. I really enjoyed chatting with him. He said they have search and rescue operations about once a week at the park. The park is very busy and filled with Appalachian Trail backpackers. I had no idea.

I liked how the course had all different types of terrain and views. Sometimes you were in the woods and sometimes you were on exposed ridge line.

Here is a view from the park after the fog cleared. I enjoyed the run and would recommend it. I have no regrets about dropping as I was treating it as a mountain training run for the Barkley Fall Classic.

A view from the park

Run Until You Drop Challenge - 2016

So there I was on January 6 minding my own business when I received notification that I had been added by John Price to a "Run Until You Drop" Facebook group. What's this? A quick read of the rules revealed in February you have to run miles or kilometers equal to the day of the month. February 1, run one mile or one kilometer. February 2, run two miles or two kilometers and so forth. Distances can't be banked or rearranged. Walking is allowed. Fair enough.

The first thing that struck me was this is a leap year so there would be "bonus" miles on February 29. I fired up Excel and calculated one would need to complete 435 miles for the miles challenge or 270 miles for the kilometer challenge. I looked farther in the thread and found someone had created this nice chart.

The second thing that struck me was how difficult the final week would be in miles or kilometers. I didn't believe I could complete the miles challenge, but I made the commitment to myself to give it a shot. As John said it was okay to start doing miles and switch to kilometers if necessary.

So I started out as a mile challenger. The first week was very easy to complete.

I didn't run into any issues until Saturday the 13th. I wore myself out running over nine miles of hilly singletrack trails and then I walked almost four miles with Marie to finish out the day.

February 14 was the St. Valentine's Day massacre for me. We woke up to about three inches of snow on the ground. It was cold and raining when I headed out. I got soaked and ended up wearing a disposable transparent yellow poncho in order to keep going. I felt really beat up. I think I ended up walking the entire fourteen miles. Fortunately, Marie walked the last three miles with me. That night I decided to switch to kilometers.

Switching to kilometers meant I only had to run 15 km (9.32 miles) on Monday. That drop off in miles was all I needed to recover and got my mojo back.

Wednesday, February 24 was notable because strong thunderstorms were forecast for the evening. I told my boss I would be in late. I ran eleven miles and got to work at 10:30 a.m. Later that day we not only had strong thunderstorms, but several tornadoes in the area. I was able to squeeze in four more miles after work. I saw a partial rainbow and then more storms and tornadoes arrived in the area.

On Saturday, February 27 I felt totally burned out. One of the UK based RUYDroppers posted photos of the beautiful hills where he was running and that motivated me to go run the Berkeley Ravine Trail at William and Mary Woods. That was just the spark I needed to keep going.

On Monday, February 29 I took the day off and ran my eighteen plus miles at Freedom Park, a very inspirational place for me. A very nice park attendant took a finisher's photo for me.

Lessons Learned

1. Being a part of a Facebook group was great. Everyone cheered and encouraged each other. Since most of the runners were based in the UK and I'm an afternoon runner I would see their posts about finishing long before I had even gone out for a run. It was very motivational.

2. The challenge needs to be respected and treated as a month long ultramarathon. You have to fuel and recover properly. The foam roller is your friend. You have to take care of yourself. If you don't you will drop.

3. On some days you will need to make unexpected adjustments. The Hokas were starting to hurt the tops of my feet and ankles. I switched to cushioned zero drop Mizuno Cursoris shoes a couple of times and it really helped.

4. If you can get your daily miles in a single run it is probably better than splitting it up. Sometimes you have to split it up due to work or other reasons.

5. Sometimes you have bad weather or you need to run at night - deal with it.

6. Some days are great, some aren't.

7. You must commit to finishing before you start.

8. You will need support from your spouse, employer, etc.

9. You need to plan your days out as much as possible and have your gear ready to go.

10. Sometimes it's easier to run than it is to walk.

I really enjoyed the whole experience. I like facing challenges like this.

I have to thank Paul Ali for setting it up and John Price for adding me to the group.

Here is my Run Until You Drop Kilo Hero finisher photo. 330 miles for the month. I can't wait until my finisher shirt arrives.