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.
7 comments:
"lost completely beyond all possible reason" Hell, I could compete for that.
You guys are hardcore!
too cool!!!!
Very cool!! You guys sound like a ton of fun!
I take it this crowd isn't into alcohol and weed...
Crall,
Don't be so sure. I homebrew in 10-gallon batches. I can't drink that much beer, so I share it with my running and brewing buddies.
It's rare that I meet a runner who doesn't enjoy good beer, other libations, and food. (Especially ultrarunners...they just enjoy all aspects of life, in general). You should have seen the recent bachelor party at my house for Alexander, our big Russian ultrarunner. We finished-off 3 kegs of homebrew, etc, and had a heck of a good time.
I wondered why you've been quiet...what a great fun! I definitely need to make my way to visit trail nerds. Did you say hi to Alex?
And yeah, I should at least try and compete for "lost soul" on trail:)
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