Susan Donnelly Ultramarathon Trail Runner. Motivational Speaker. http://www.susanruns100s.com
Putting the Puzzle Together Date : March 1, 2009
For those of you that don’t know, the Knoxville Track Club is hosting a new 50K this year and my name shows up on the schedule as race director. With an embarrassing abundance of trail riches in any nearby direction, the tough part was choosing The Trail. Rob and I spent the better part of a year running trails, debating the pros and cons of each, and dreaming of the day people would come share the best of what we have here in east TN. Once the options were placed on paper, the choice was obvious. It’s remote, very E TN in character, the management agency is extremely supportive, and there’s room to grow to longer distances in the future. The problem is, it’s tough. Very tough. Ridiculously tough. So instead of running more beautiful trails and having fun, we spent the weekend driving the adjoining “roads” (the term should be used loosely in some spots) to make sure aid stations could go where I thought they could and to see if there was a place to incorporate some lessthan-epic road to speed up the race.
Even though the running was minimal, it was fun to see the course from a completely different perspective. We put it all together in GPS format and clearly have multiple options to keep the course challenging but do-able. Another weekend or two will get sacrificed to piecing the puzzle together but the good news is the pieces will fit.
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