DNF

On Sunday, ran the Ironmaster's Challenge 50K on trails in and around Pine Grove Furnace State Park in south-central PA.

Pluses: beautiful area, trails, and weather.  Good running companion, my buddy JS, who chose to hang with me, though very much faster.

Took 3 hard falls in the first half of the race.  Unusual.

By the aid station just before Mile 20, I was spent.

Dropped out there.

That's my race report.  Will still wear the shirt and drink bean water from the mug.

Update on the Ironmaster's Trail Runs

Several weeks ago I posted here about running the Ironmaster's 25K at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in southcentral PA.

During the run a number of us went off course, so I never bothered checking the results.  Turns out, however, that ALL the 25K runners went off course--either by poor signage, or tampered-with signage, or runner error--with a net effect of a loss of perhaps 1K of distance.   

So....turns out that I did place second in my age group, and since we all screwed up, the results--though relative--do in fact count for something.

That something is my age group award, a Performance Race Visor by SweatVac (I have no financial interest).  It's a lightweight, washable, reflective visor and I will wear it proudly.  See, at my age you have to grab for all the accolades you can, when you can!

[image credit Gary]

Back to the Appalachian Trail

Early Sunday, my buddy Jody and I did a  rendezvous at the Appalachian Trail for a fairly short run (some 12 miles).  Previous post here about needing an Appalachian Trail fix; photo credit here.

  

We met at the Big Flat trail crossing east of Shippensburg, PA, and ran north towards Pine Grove Furnace State Park (south would have taken us towards Caledonia State Park).  The trail starts out at 2000' elevation--pretty high for PA--and drops some 700' or so to the low spot of 1300' about 6 miles out, where we turned around at Michaux Road.  This was right near the site of a German submariner POW camp from WWII.  We need to explore that area more when the leaves are off the trees.

The run was routine, mostly single track, rocky at spots but overall largely runnable.  When I run with Jody, I tend to exert myself more because he likes to run the mild uphills that I would otherwise walk.  In fact, in the last mile, mostly uphill, I told Jody to just take off and I'd see him at the cars.  I'd probably been holding him back most of the run.

But that's one of the great things about Ultrarunning--there's lots of room for different strokes for different folks.  I'm slower, Jody is faster, but we make it work when we run together.

No critters, but as always, Mother Nature comes through.  She delivered  me some small, but tasty, wild huckleberries.  Mmmmm!  Also some delicious cold spring water.  Again, mmmmm!

It'd been many moons since we had run there together, and all the good times and camaraderie came flooding back.  We need to schedule this regularly, say about once a a month.