It seems that my blog has shown up on the Greenland Trail website – a complete surprise to me and one I’m thrilled about. The link there is to my race results and race report which is here. To give back, I thought I’d share more of my experience of the race itself.
I’ll start with - what a great event! It was all good!
The Greenland Trail race is actually three races, a 50k, a 25k, and an 8 miler held in the Greenland Open Space near Larkspur, CO. The Open Space area has a trail that’s an 8 mile loop and so the organizers have brilliantly used that loop to create a race of 1 loop (8 miles), 2 loops (25k), and 4 loops (50k). The 50k starts first at 7:00am, the 25k starts at 7:30am, and lastly the 8 miler starts at 8:00am. With this offset start, the races all end up mingling together out on the course. It’s was great to see so many people on the course. The other advantage seemed to be a staggered packet pickup which I’m sure helped organizers.
The Greenland Open Space area is beautiful! I’ve read it covers about 3000 acres and it seems to be mostly rolling grass covered hills, with only a few trees here and there. The area is surrounded by buttes and in some areas there are beautiful views of the front range. From the start/finish there is a spectacular view of Pikes Peaks.
The course itself is more challenging than on paper. Looking at the elevation profile online it looks like a fairly steady grade for most of the five miles of the climb. The first 3.5 are fairly steady, and then it kicks up. It’s runnable for some of the stronger runners, still I saw a lot of people walking. The downhill for the last three miles is just fun! The course is either single track of double track and wonderfully soft. For footing it’s great with few rocks, ruts, or roots to contend with. The only shade is under your hat, I believe I remember it meanders past a few trees, but nothing to really hide you from the sun. With the challenge it’s a great course. For some the repetition of loops was hard, while for others it was good to know what was coming. The loop format also allowed for two well served aid stations. It was also very spectator friendly – there were several dozen people camped out at the aid station near the finish to cheer everyone on which I really appreciated.
The organization seemed very smooth. They even sent out a reminder on Friday about the warm weather moving in. With that in mind, they were well prepared with lots of water and ice. After my race I sat the aid station near the finish for about an hour and the volunteers there were very encouraging, supportive, and eager. With each new runner coming in they were ready with water, Heed, food, ice, words of encouragement – whatever was needed to support every runner. I’ve been a volunteer, race director, and runner, having those types of volunteers really makes the event great!
A few other notes – people of parking, mostly enough porta-potties though perhaps a few more would reduce the lines, plenty of food at the finish including pizza. Packet pickup was quick and easy – a number, a timing chip, and a shirt, nothing more to it. The results were posted quickly at the race itself and online.
Overall a great event!
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