PCT 50-Miler and OBF

This week, I made reservations for our trip to Portland, Oregon in July. My wife and son will go with me, and our foster son will drive over from Spokane to meet us.

We'll spend some time at the Oregon Brewer's Festival, which I haven't been to since year 2000. While I'm there, I'll also run in the the PCT50 trail race, on the Pacific Coast Trail. It includes the beautiful Mount Hood as part of it's 50-mile course. Check out some of the photos from the race web site.

We'll spend about 1/2 our time in the Mount Hood area. I've been there many times for the Hood to Coast relay, but my family has only been in that area a couple of times. It should be fun. Can't wait!

Trail Nerd Series

Our little trailrunning group here in Kansas City is going to put on a fun series of short trail races, throughout the rest of this year. They will be impromptu, short distance events of 10K to 10-miles in length. It should be fun. We'll have at least 3 more Saturday morning races in various parks, and (hopefully) a night run, as well.

We now have available, just in time for Summer: short-sleeve Trail Nerds (black) tee-shirts with the following (Jason Crosby-designed) logo on the front:



















We will also be ordering some (silver) sleeveless, technical (moisture-wicking) running shirts with a much smaller and simpler logo on it that will look like this:














Being a Trail Nerd has never been so much fun.





Happy Trails!!!

Weekend Trail Race (Running & Race Directing)

On Saturday, April 15th, I race-directed the 2006 version of the Red Bridge Ramble. (I also got to run in the race myself).

The Red Bridge ramble is a low-key, 8-mile trail run in Kansas City, MO that was previously race directed by Lou Joline. He let me know 3 weeks ago that he'd like me and the Trail Nerds to have a crack at it, and see if we could improve upon the race.

The weather on race day was absolutely perfect, and everyone that showed up to run were in good spirits. Forty-five runners entered, which surpassed last year's participation by 300%! We had quite a few newbie trailrunners who were "chomping at the bit" to get their feet wet (literally).

The race course is on the unpaved Blue River Parkway trail system. It crosses the Blue River 4 times and has a variety of different kinds of terrain to run on, which includes: wooded, rocky & rooty trails, open grassland, twisty single-track, and flat, fast dirt trails.

Caleb Chatfield, a Trail Nerd, ripped through the course in 54:58. Veteran Trail Nerd Kyle Amos followed in 2nd place at 57:02. Lightning-fast trail-newbie Susie Scheer took third overall, and first female in 1:00:45! Following them to round-out the top five were Rich McNally and Jeff Behrens. Second and third-place females were Angela Ballard and Rachel Westendorf.

A few awards were given out, including two to James Barker. He won the "lost completely beyond all possible reason" award, and the award for "most ticks." He also took a very good "competitive fall," (which I witnessed), but was surpassed in that department by Jeff "Trail Rash" Behrens. (I still owe you an award, Jeff).

Note: We had a slight timing device issue, so most of the times were off by a small margin. The order of finish is very accurate, though.Special thanks to the volunteers:
Markos Jacquez -who helped mark the course with me (the night before the race until 10 p.m.), by actually running it.
Kyle Amos, Ben Reeves, and Caleb Chatfield - who helped un-mark the course after the race.
Dave Suptic and a helper - Registration & finish line.
Lou Joline - provided the half-way water station and starting line food.

Dick Ross took some great shots of the race and has them on his website.
Full race results are at this blog.

More Rockin' K Trail Run Photos

Here are a few more photos from the Rockin' K Trail race on Saturday.
Yes, there are female Trail Nerds, as well. We don't discriminate. A (trail) nerd is a nerd.
All of them finished and did very well, by the way.

Rockin' K Trail Run Photos

Here are a few photos from the Rockin' K Trail Run. I didn't take a camera with me during the race, but you can see more of the course from previous year's photos that I put in this post.
You can find my brief race report for this year here. Kyle did well in the 50-Miler, by the way.

Rockin' K Trail Run

A bunch of us Trail Nerds went out to Kanopolis State Park in the middle of Kansas to run the offered 50-miler and marathon distances. This year, I chose the marathon option, because my right knee still isn't healed from a nasty fall 3-weeks ago. It hurt right from the get-go, and continued to plague me for the entire race. I'm not too unhappy for not opting for the 50-miler. After all, I went into this race as just a training run for upcoming 100-milers, and I saved the knee to be able to keep training. (I am getting smarter with age).

This was my 6th time out at this race. We've never camped in the campground near the start/finish area before. It was a real treat to do so this year. A whole gaggle of us Trail Nerds stayed at one campsite, and a few others stayed in area hotels. We were going to stay and camp on Saturday night as well, but severe weather moved in to quench that idea. We had to get out quick, too. The storm, with "tornadic activity," 70-MPH winds, and severe thunder showers chased us all the way to Kansas City. We arrived home shortly before Midnight.