Ironmaster's Trail Runs

[image credit Gary...more on this photo later]

On Sunday I did something I've never done: deliberately registered for and ran a 25K trail race instead of the 50K, in recognition of the fact that my training was insufficient to comfortably finish the 50K.  

In other words, where formerly I would have programmed for success and run "up" instead of running "down," I opted for the common sense version.  

The event was a series of simultaneous trails runs/walks (50K, 25K and 15K) at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in south-central PA, called the Ironmaster's Challenge.  See, this area was a major iron-making site in America's early days, triggered by a fortuitous combination of iron-bearing ore and plenty of trees for charcoal-making.

I must say that this race was great--I loved it and definitely will come back.  Lots of good people, superior post-race food and drink, and a fantastic location.  My advice for anyone in driving range: DO THIS RACE NEXT YEAR!

My general goal was simply to spend a pleasant morning running for about 4 hours in the woods.  Goal accomplished.  However...along the way--either by poor signage, or tampered-with signage, or runner error--the group of about 20 runners of whom I was a part, went off course on the 25K race.  We kept seeing 15K and 50K signage but none for our race, the 25K.  I've been "lost" on a trail before, but this was my first instance of being off-course and being so far past the last known point that it was smarter to proceed than to backtrack.  Net effect was a loss of perhaps 1K.  

I'm eagerly awaiting the results and any explanation from the RD.  But since I knew I was off course and probably ran short, I didn't even bother with checking the results board since I knew my time was tainted.

Which brings me to the photo above: this was taken along PA Rt 233 on the way to the race.  Little did I know how prophetic it would be, imagining that the 3 "babes in the woods" were actually rookie Ultrarunners.  Turns out the real story was infinitely more tragic: three murdered children 80 years ago.  Link here.

Getting "Lost" Pays Dividends

While running a couple weeks ago near "my" trail and shelter over near the Tuscarora Trail (southern PA), I attempted a loop that wound up involving a poorly marked and maintained trail.  That trail also was affected by recent logging operations that obliterated some of it.

Bottom line was that I had to do some bushwhacking to reach the road that I knew was downhill, so no real problem, just an inconvenience.

But along the way I found this treasure.  It's interesting to speculate when this place was last lived in and by whom....

 

 

[photos by Gary]

 

 

 

Whales, Getting Lost...and Ultrarunning

Ever get lost while you were trail running?  Or slightly stray off course?  It's a disquieting thing.  First you practice denial: "I'm OK."  Then the creeping doubt becomes real and you admit you have a problem.  Then you try to solve it, either by backtracking to a known point (the right approach in a race to avoid DQ), or forge on ahead to attempt to reach a known location.

Now these guys seem to just know the way, unerringly.  This story is way cool:

An eight-year project that tracked humpback whale migrations by satellite shows the huge mammals follow uncannily straight paths for weeks at a time.

The results suggest a single migratory mechanism isn't responsible. Instead, humpbacks may use a combination of the sun's position, Earth's magnetism and even star maps to guide their 10,000-mile journeys.

"Humpback whales are going across some of most turbulent waters in the world, yet they keep going straight," said environmental scientist Travis Horton of the University of Canterbury, whose team will publish their findings April 20 in Biology Letters. "They're orienting with something outside of themselves, not something internal."

Click through to the story and check out the plots of tracked whales setting a straight line.  Nothing short of amazing!