Lehigh Valley Zoo / Trexler Preserve
North of Allentown, PA
Put on by the Lehigh Valley Road Runner
Weather, course layout, water stations, amenities: all pretty good, except something of a shortage of PortaJohns.
They talked about the great views and the buffalo herd. They didn't mention the 7 (at least) hills that ranged from 30 to 45 degrees in slope and just went on and on.
The footing wasn't bad in my Vibrams, but I think a BF BF runner would have to have been much better prepared than I can even imagine to handle the crushed stone, eroded shale and more crushed stone. There was one stream crossing at about 8.5 miles that felt wonderful, with trout stream water.
I'm still not fully recovered - it's only been 5 hours or so since I finished, but my feet and legs actually aren't feeling too bad. My spirit needs a bit of healing, but that will come. I think the worst part was coming around a bend and looking up into the teeth of another dry water fall and knowing I'll only get 20 feet up the damn thing before I'm walking again and having a tough go doing that!..and then have to shuffle and winge on the way down and hope I didn't start to slide. I've never ever encountered anything near so steep in a race or practice run.
Winners ran in 1:05 or so. I finished respectably in the middle of the pack, 142 out of about 400, in just under 1:50.
North of Allentown, PA
Put on by the Lehigh Valley Road Runner
Weather, course layout, water stations, amenities: all pretty good, except something of a shortage of PortaJohns.
They talked about the great views and the buffalo herd. They didn't mention the 7 (at least) hills that ranged from 30 to 45 degrees in slope and just went on and on.
The footing wasn't bad in my Vibrams, but I think a BF BF runner would have to have been much better prepared than I can even imagine to handle the crushed stone, eroded shale and more crushed stone. There was one stream crossing at about 8.5 miles that felt wonderful, with trout stream water.
I'm still not fully recovered - it's only been 5 hours or so since I finished, but my feet and legs actually aren't feeling too bad. My spirit needs a bit of healing, but that will come. I think the worst part was coming around a bend and looking up into the teeth of another dry water fall and knowing I'll only get 20 feet up the damn thing before I'm walking again and having a tough go doing that!..and then have to shuffle and winge on the way down and hope I didn't start to slide. I've never ever encountered anything near so steep in a race or practice run.
Winners ran in 1:05 or so. I finished respectably in the middle of the pack, 142 out of about 400, in just under 1:50.
