There's a marathon here in Ashland in a few weeks--Lithia Loop Marathon--that is run completely on trails with somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 feet of elevation gain. I've contemplated doing it, but I don't think I'm ready for the distance yet. Jessica, on the other hand, is more seriously considering it and wrote up a plan, which she's kept to so far, that could get her to the finish line. She had planned on running about half the course with some folks yesterday morning but much of it was closed due to logging. Instead, they ran from town up to 4 Corners, which worked out to be 2800 feet of climbing over 15 miles. Jess reported to me that she handled it quite well.
Here's the elevation profile and course map for the marathon.
3 comments:
Go Jess!
I just did my first trail marathon last Sunday and it was quite the challenge. But recovery was so much faster than after a road marathon - I didn't feel nearly as beat up the next couple of days like I normally do after a road race.
I did another short trail race called a "Woodsy" today and it was a lot of fun; not nearly as technical as the Nipmuck Marathon and pretty flat in comparison. But my legs felt fine the whole time, less than a week after the marathon, and if someone hadn't torn down some of the course marks, I could have won it... this way I got lost and had to push pretty hard for the last three miles to make it to second place. Rats! I won a pair of socks and a towel though - gotta love practical prizes. Speaking of which, 3rd place in the Nipmuck Marathon won me a vegan pie! So yeah, some races are totally worth it haha!
be well y'all, sounds like you're having a blast in OR. I'm totally jealous :)
Sounds like your running's going well. Congrats on your races, and good luck at the MDI marathon.
Jess and I are living in Ashland, and it's an ultrarunning mecca. We aren't at altitude here, as Ashland sits at about only 1800 feet, but we live in a valley, and if you want to run trails, which are ridiculously abundant starting right here in town, then you've gotta run up. You can run up to 7 or 8000 feet pretty close to town. There are hundreds of miles of trails, including the PCT.
Because of this, Hal Koerner (two-time Western States champ and this year's Hardrock 100 champ among a gazillion other ultrarunning achievements) and Timothy Olson (this year's Western States champ in a new course record of 14 hours and change) both live and train right here in Ashland. It's a very tight-knit community, and we run into these guys all the time. They're very normal, down-to-earth folks. There are hordes of other solid ultrarunners here, too.
You should come and check it out.
Go Jess! We should all do that one next year.
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