The Door County Fall 50 is my favorite team race. This year my team has 4 runners in the 50 mile relay. We'll each run twice for about 12 miles total for the race. This race doesn't need any special training for me since I finished a marathon about a month ago. I can't wait!
The Surf the Murph 50 mile run is a different situation. I've never run a 50 mile race and have never been to the Murphy-Hanrehan Park until Saturday, just over a week ago. That was my first training run there. One of my running friends met me there to give me a tour. I had a course map and we roughly followed some of the course. It was in the mid 80s for temps that day and we had a tough slow run. 13.3 miles in 2:40. Ugh. After that run I changed my 1st-loop race-day target from 3 hours to 4 hours. October 30th is going to be a long day.
Yesterday I went to Murphy-Hanrehan Park again for more training. Just as I was entering the trails from the parking lot, a woman was hitting the trails too. She was running about 30 yards ahead of me for the first mile and while walking up one of the big hills, we met. She was out there training just like me. The 30th was going to be her first 50 mile race too and we set out to run a loop together. Just like at Afton, I can be holding a map in my hand and still not be able to follow the route. Even so, we got a good feel for the course. There was an area, in the far South-West of the park, where we tried to figure out where the course went. We just couldn't figure it out. We decided to abort that little expedition and I guided us across a dry swamp. Based on all the cuts I got on my legs from the nettles, raspberry bushes, and thorny shrubs, I hope my new running friend didn't get cut up too much! Sorry KT! Finding our way to a trail again, we ran most of the remainder of the course and finished with 14.6 miles in 2:28. Not too bad in that terrain but I was definitely going too fast for race day.
The Door County Fall 50 will be a day of fun and the Surf the Murph 50 Miler will be a day of endurance and testing limits!
--Mark
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3 comments:
I as well am looking forward to taking on my first 50 miler at Surf the Murph this year. As the day approaches I go back and forth between confident and trying to find a way out. I have come to the conclusion that I will take the race one loop at a time and enjoy the ride.
I've attempted to run out the loop a couple time and both times found myself lost or double back on areas I have already run. Do you have a digital version of the race route you can email me.
See you our there,
Chris
Chris,
The course map in pdf format is on the Surf the Murph website now. You can find it from the main page.
I'm taking the race one loop at a time too.
See you at the start!
--Mark
I doubt there is a complete map of the race course as it's been a little different each of the 3 years it's been run. There will also most likely be some surprise single track that isn't on the main park map, which greatly contributes to getting lost during training runs ;)
Beautiful park and an awesome race!
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