Monday, August 11, 2008

Trail Racing

(FYI-- my first post)

Back in high school, I ran a trail race called the Cross Country Challenge a few years in a row. It was held on a farm in north-central Illinois sometime in early December, and wound through a cow pasture, a swamp, over a couple of streams, woods, past a bull paddocks and through several fences and a large piece of rusting, unidentified farm equipment. I have memories of getting stuck up to my waste in near freezing mud, bruising my shin on floating ice as I plunged through a stream, tripping over frozen cow dung, and being passed on a rocky down hill by a guy with no shoes (I guess the mud took them). All in all, a rollicking good time even if I couldn't feel my feet for half the race. Anyhow, I've been wanting to do more races like it ever since.

I'm not sure it's quite as wild and woolly, but I'm considering doing the XTERRA River Valley Run 10k Aug 23 in Manchester, MD. I know it goes through one stream, at least. Anyone interested?

Also, if anyone knows of any other good trail races around, let me know. Roads are all fine and good, but I'll take the mud and rocks over asphalt any day.

-Patrick

4 comments:

RM said...

Patrick: Travis usually has a good pulse on the trail race scene. Travis, can you give Patrick some suggestions of races that may be less than 20 miles?

I hear the River Valley Run is pretty tame, but it's supposed to be a decent event, even if it is sponsored by Harm City.

Travis said...

Dude, Hello, There is a list of stuff I posted a little while ago. Races and runs. You missed one Sun and there is a training run this Sat. Let me know if you want in.

Travis

pbaur said...

Thanks for the response, guys. Travis, where/when's the run on Sat (I'm interested as long as it's not 3+ hours)?

alyssa said...

Some other good places to check for trail races/training stuff is the Virginia Happy Trails event page: http://www.vhtrc.org/events/calendar.htm
These events tend to be on the longer side, but WV also has a great trail running group that has shorter events which are usually really well done: http://www.wvmtr.org/

Also, it's a long way off but in Feb. there is a trail race in NC that is either 8, 20 or 40 miles. I did it last year and had a good time, it's usually pretty competitive for all distances too. Registration opens sometime in the fall and last year it filled up in 48 hours: www.raceuwharrie.com