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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Lined up for the start |
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| Trail to the Cascades |
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| Just below the Cascades |
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| The Cascades |
5.
Beautiful scenery.
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| 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.
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| Fire road after the first climb |
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| More fire road |
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| Single track |
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| Some scenery |
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| 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
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| Near Mountain Lake Lodge where the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed |
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