Viking Dash ½ Marathon Trail Run
This morning, I was in Lowell, NC for the Viking Dash ½ Marathon
Trail at George Poston Park. Not sure if I consider the ½ marathon distance as
dash but maybe others do. Anyway, based on what I have read the Viking Dash Trail
race series is a relatively new series. From what I understood talking to
others today, this was the first Viking Dash race at Poston Park for them. With
any new race location, there is learning curve. A race director can go over a
course numerous times, and still, the moment he dumps several hundred runners
on to it, issues that he never realized come right to the top.
This happened to us this morning. We were on the Laurel Hill
Loop which is blazed with pink paint. We came up to an intersection on the
backside of this trail, and someone had blazed pink paint on the other side of
the intersection which leads on to the Foundation Loop. Those leading us didn’t
catch it, and we went on to the Foundation Loop. Soon, questions were being
raised if we were still on the right trail. No one was certain of what to do so
when we came to a service road. As if making this first mistake wasn’t enough,
we had to compound it by following the service road. Long story short, we
meandered around until we stumbled back on to the Laurel trail. This time, I
took over leading us back over the course that we had just run. This time, when
we came to the same intersection, I slowed and looked around. The pink blazed
trees led off to the right so this time, I turned right and everyone else
followed. After this, I led us through the rest of the Laurel Loop and back on
to the red blazed trail. Here the eventual winner took over and soon pulled
away from all of us. After this bump in the road, I no further trouble over the
2nd or the 3rd loops. I knew where I was going.
Making this a bit interesting to ponder, several weeks ago
when I first pulled up the course maps, I noticed that they were running much of
the trail system backwards. Not that this is an issue, they just have to mark
the course a lot more. I knew this because I ran the Wicked Root 10 miler last
year on these same trails. I remember the blazing of the trees with paint. The
paint is on the side of the tree that I am running towards which make a ton of
sense. Right? Running the course
backwards, I would not be able to see the paint until I passed. On Friday, the
race director sent out and email with our prerace instructions. He included a course
map link so being a good runner, I clicked on it. To my surprise, the course
was entirely different. Instead of 2 loops backwards, we would be running 3
loops forward, and running in the expected direction for seeing the trail
blazings. This was probably smart move on their part. Otherwise, we still might
be wondering around Lowell, NC.
To share some of the back story here, I didn’t have this
race on my calendar. I happened to be browsing Facebook when I also it. Running
made good sense for a couple of reasons. The race was an easy drive from my
house, and the race presented a way to hop on a different trail for some miles.
While I am a big fan of the WWC trails, mixing up them with other trails make my
runs a lot more interesting.
Moving to wrap this up, I was happy finishing 2nd
overall in 2:11:15 and bringing home this super nice Viking goblet. However, I
was jealous of the 10k awards which were these huge knives. They were awesome
looking. I would consider going back to run the 10k for knife.
For those that might be considering this race series, the
race shirt was okay. Likely, it will go in to my closet never to be worn. I got
a large, but when I looked at it later, it was a Viking large not runner large.
The shirt is huge on me.
There is one thing that I would like to call out here which
I liked a lot. After the race, they had baked potatoes. After running 14+
miles, I had two of them, and they tasted awesome. I guess that I was hungrier
than I thought.
That’s it for this week. Back to training next week.
Kickin’ up tail mud this weekend,
The Cool Down Runner
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