Uwharrie 100 Training Runs

About once a month between April and October, the Uwharrie 100 Ultra holds training runs on their race course.

Martin sent me the link to it, and he invited me to run their Aug training run with him this weekend. Since I am always looking for new and challenging runs, I headed over this morning.

By reputation alone, I knew the course would be tough. We did the figure 8 loop of the course with an out and back section thrown for some additional miles. Martin was awesome hostess, but I could easily tell that he was holding back for us. He was flying up the steep hills while I was sucking wind. Outside of a few sections at Crowder's Mt. I cannot ever remember doing so much climbing, and the course is pretty technical in nature. That's not to say there are no easy cruising sections because there were. But by and large, there were far more rocks and roots to keep us runners off balance. Martin told me before we started that it was not a question of “if” you would fall, but a question of “when”. True to his word, Martin went down before we even a mile in to run.

My respect for those that run this course regularly only grew today. The level of strength and fitness in them is truly something to behold. I did a single lap, and I cannot image going back out 4 more times for 100 miles. Let alone doing 2 of the laps in the dark. These guys are amazing.

If you find yourself in need of a run, check out their page. If you want to do something solo, the coarse is well marked. At regular intervals, the trees are blazed with yellow marks going out and white marks on the return trip. Remember it is a figure 8 so you are crossing trails.

Big thank you for those providing support to the runners today. The Gatorade help hit the spot for an tired runner.

The Cool Down Runner