Saturday, February 07, 2015

Mid Maryland 50K

A nice local winter event is the Mid Maryland 50K. It is entirely within Rockburn Branch park, and consists of 5 loops, 10K each. The race has a solo ultra division, and a relay division which allows a team of 2 to 5 runners.

I'm familiar with the trails, since I run at Rockburn and over to Patapsco Valley State Park all the time. The trails are runnable, with a few roots and rocks along the way, and a minor hill or three. The big issue was thawing - for the first loop, the ground was solid. After a few more loops and sun, it tends to get a bit sloppy and muddy. Particularly the section roughly 2 mi into the loop, over by the neighborhood between Kerger Rd and Talbots Landing. The course passes through a field and by some historic farm building, and that section tends to mud out.

Nevertheless, this is a fun event and what is trail running if you don't have a stream crossing or mud to deal with? ;)

The start/finish passes through a pavilion where aid is setup and I stopped briefly each time to eat/drink and top of my bottle.



I knew lots of people at the event, running it, running on a relay team, or just spectating, so it is a great low key early year event. My friend Mikhail took this awesome pic of me. 

I think next year I'll volunteer at it or look to be part of a relay team. The event is great, it is just that there are some other ones around the same time (plus or minus a week) so next year I want to check out something different.

I was freezing afterwards so after chatting and hanging around a while, I zipped out for a nice cafe mocha at Starbucks.