Course Information:

• Course Description:

  The course will consist of open grass fields, wide trails/fireroads, and about half will be tight single track.  The grass looks and feels like grass.  The wide trails/fireroads are wide and easy, well mostly.  The single track is, well... tough.  This is a trail national championship, not a run through another park trail race.  Those races are great, but sometimes you want to push yourself on tougher endeavors.  Most of the descents are fairly gradual but have a lot of turns, like on a trail going down a mountain.  Some descents are a bit steep.  The climbs are steep; the race starts on top of a mountain.  You may need to hike briefly on some of the climbs but are free to run up if you like, some do.  There are plenty of rocks and roots to enjoy.  So are you ready for a challenge? 

  A little more course details:

  One section of the course picked up it's own nickname, The Rock Climb.  It is not actually a rock climb, but you may end up using your hands as you work up this part, plus it is only 20 yards.  The footing ranges from relatively smooth to highly technical.  There is just a small amount of relatively flat running, so you are either running up or down most of the time.  Most descents are 9-15% with one 150 meter section of 28.5%.  What goes down must go up, so if you are going to go up, I figured that it should be real climb.  Most climbs are in the 10% range with two bigger climbs.  The first big climb comes just before halfway with a 14 mile climb at 18.5%.  The second big one comes with just under a 12 mile to go.  This climb is again 14 mile, but at over 22%, it's a grind.  It includes The Rock Climb section.  Now before you say this race is too tough, we had several 70+ runners participate who said that they loved the course and plan on returning.   But maybe they are tougher than most folks nowadays.