Keweenaw Trail Running Festival 10K

The Keweenaw Trail Running Festival was held on July 11-12 this year in Copper Harbor, Michigan. For those who don't know, Copper Harbor is the northernmost town in Michigan. I heard of this race series last year while I was on vacation in the area. This year I was able to run one of the races in the series before heading home from vacation.

The race series is three races:

• 10K at 8am Saturday
• 5.8K hill climb (917' elev. gain) at 6pm Saturday
• 25K at 7am Sunday
  

I was staying in McClain State Park outside of Hancock, MI for the week with my family. Friday afternoon we drove to the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge outside of Copper Harbor for my race packet and then did some sightseeing and hit some gift shops in town. The race packet was minimal - T-shirt, race bib, and 4 pins - nothing else and nothing to throw away. Nice.

I woke up a dozen times Friday night wondering what time it was and if my alarm was going to ring. Eventually it did and I was up at 4:35 and off to Copper Harbor by 5:10. It's about a 40 mile drive for where I was staying and I wanted to get there around 6am when the bus was going to take runners to the start. I'm always early so it's not surprising that I was the third runner on the bus. One was a woman from Ontario (Janice) that has run the series several times and the other was a young woman from Minneapolis (Melissa) that has never run on a trail in her life. Eventually enough runners were on the bus so we were shuttled to the start at Ft. Wilkins State Park. There we got our timing chips which were velcro ankle bands.

The weather was very good for running - 58 degrees, sunny, strong breezes, and very low humidity. At race time we got our instructions on how to watch for the flags so we wouldn't get lost. I had earlier planned to line up at around one-quarter back from the start. I was chatting too much with Janice and Melissa and the starting line was more wide than deep and I think I ended up starting about 60% back. Oh well. At the sound of the horn we were off and everyone (150 runners) was heading for a path 100 yards ahead. We hit the path and there were a few spots where we slowed due to too many people on such a narrow path. This was a flatter area of the course at the beginning but I was limited by the speed of those in front of me. I suppose it let me warm up better and save energy for later.

Here is the course description from the race website:

The course starts in the grassy field overlooking Lake Fanny Hooe at Ft. Wilkins State Park. It follows a wide trail along the lake until crossing the Lake Manganese Rd and entering Clyde's Meadow which surrounds runners with wildflowers, ponds, and wild birds. Runners then enter a dense cedar forest and follow a winding trail before crossing a small stream. After crossing the main road into Copper Harbor, runners jump onto the exquisite single track of the Garden Brook Trail that winds its way up along the brook for several miles before recrossing the main road and entering the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge trail system. The trail remains narrow single track and winds gracefully through the rolling terrain and forests north and east of the lodge. The trail emerges from the forest at 5.9 miles. The last third of a mile takes runners over the soft grass of Fairway 9 to the finish behind the lodge.

The description above sounds 'lovely'. Half way though the course I was trying to think of the proper word to describe the hilly trails. I couldn't decide if it was a Bitch or a Bastard. Something missing from the description is that the trails were heavily hiked and therefore tree roots were greatly exposed. Also, since we were in copper country, there were rocks, not big ones, just bedrock and small rocks, many that were the size to fill your hand and were not easy to run on. It was very difficult to get around people on this single track but if you really needed to get by every so often there were spots to run off the trail to pass. I'm sure the forest was beautiful but I didn't see it. I had to keep my eyes on the ground nearly the entire race. The race map shows 1,258 feet of climbing and 765 feet of descending. The roots, rocks, and hills made for a great race.

Below are my splits. The first mile was slower than it should be because I wasn't in the right spot at the start. My last mile is faster because there were fewer roots/hills.

mile 1 - 8:20
mile 2 - 9:18
mile 3 - 9:43
mile 4 - 9:29
mile 5 - 9:20
mile 6 - 6:32
last .2 - 1:20 (6:39 pace)

I finished in 54:02 according to my watch. My new friend Janice finished 2 minutes behind me and was second in her age group. I didn't bother waiting for results (update: I was 6/10 of age 45-49) to see if I placed since there were several guys around my age and they started out, and finished, in front of me. Melissa took a little longer to finish and I was excited to hear what she thought since it was her first time running on trails.... She loved it. I recommended that she check out the Upper Midwest Trail Runners website when she gets back home for races and places to run. I had some water, a banana, and a mini Cliff Bar to get some energy back before I headed back to McClain to pack and drive the family home.

My thoughts about this race: I loved the 10K and next year I hope to be able to run the full series. If I did that I would definately stay in/near Copper Harbor for the weekend to cut down on the driving.

update: I found the race results. I was 6/10 in my age group and 39/77 for males.

--Mark