Event 36 - The Sweep

I volunteered to help out with the Sutallee Trace Trail Challenge 10 mile race this morning.  A few weeks back they (Mountain Goat Adventures) were looking for volunteers for this race and they were offering free entry into any upcoming race  this year.  Works for me.  I've volunteered before, it's usually a fun 'feel good' thing and you typically receive a T-shirt, some snacks, water,...  But Lisa (RD @ Mountain Goat) had a much better offer - include free entry into one of their future races.  So I took them up on it. My job, 10 mile race sweep.

Basically this meant I'd make sure I was behind the last runner (which is very normal for me anyway : ) and I'd remove all of the orange ribbons (hung all over the pace so folks don't get lost), take down the orange signs, pick up the orange flags,...  in essence 'sweep' the course.

So, I lined up at the back of the pack for the 10 mile race:

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and we were off!

So for this race instead of being in the back of the pack, I was behind the back of the pack.

It wasn't too long into the race before crossing on of my favorite trail bridges:

favorite trail bridge

But soon it became time to go to work.  The rest of the time I was looking for and removing the following:

Some were easy to remove, some were not.  Also, in the spirit of keeping the trail clean, any other trash that was laying around went into the bag.  I did not come across too many empty GU Energy Gel packs.  The ones I came across, I hope they were accidently dropped by someone and not just thrown on the ground in the woods - but that might be a whole other topic of discussion.

There was a bunch of poison ivy on the trail, I did used Tecnu afterwards - sure hope it works.  I did get lost twice.  This was situational as I was the one taking down the markings.  It was sort of fun - I just had to find the 'next' orange marker on one of the paths,  But it did get to the point of looking at the soil, leaves, pine straw and trying to figure out if a few hundred people had just gone over an area!  It became very obvious when the only sneaker prints were mine : )

The only thing that really went wrong though - was my fault & could have happened anywhere -  I lost my car key on the trail in the woods.  I had it on a carabiner but at some point the key got off.  Long story short - had to call my wife after the race was over to drive the 50 miles and bring her key.  Lesson learned on my part - WILL ALWAYS HAVE SPARE KEY!

So even though I did not race this race, I still did the race and had a pretty good workout from it.
It counts : )

Race 21 - Sutallee Trace Trail Challenge

I had a pretty good workout this morning, did the Sutallee Trace 10 Mile Trail Challenge in Canton, GA (by Mountain Goat Adventures).  I think about 300 people showed up.  They had a 4 mile and a 10 mile.  I was on the fence about doing this race as their website said hikers and walkers were welcomed but they suggested strongly considering doing the 4 mile instead of the 10, as the 10 was more difficult and had a 3 hour time limit (with an average runner completion time of 2 hours).  So a few days ago I just went ahead and signed up for the 10.


It was about an hour drive, but 6:00 AM on a Saturday morning - the traffic around Atlanta is a piece of cake!    Wish it was always the case...  Arrived with plenty of time, checked in, got all the race day stuff.  And once again, samples for a trail race included Tecnu Poison Ivy Scrub.  I had also read on their website that we'd be going through some areas where there was a lot of it.


At 8:15 the RD called us all together for some pre-race instructions about the course so we circled around and listened:

I have learned that it is important to listen to the RD in these sessions for trail races and even more so the smaller ones because I do find myself in the back of the pack and sometimes that pack basically consists of me!


They did a wave start, 10 milers first and 4 milers a few minutes later.  And since the two courses were the same for a bit, this meant that the really fast 4 milers would probably be passing some of us slower 10 milers.


We came upon a bridge in the first mile or so and it was a potential bottleneck as it was single file - no way to pass:

Of course by the time I got there, there was no bottleneck!  


It was not too long after the bridge when the 4 milers started passing me.  They were all great about it.  Heard quite a few "on your left".  However, it did not take me long to figure out that "on your left", on a narrow single path, trying to get over to the right as much as possible, with patches of poison ivy all over the place, pretty much meant "in the poison ivy".

It was a good thing that I followed their advice and brought a gallon container of tap water for doing the poison ivy scrub after the race!  I was going to need it.


It was a nice trail.  What I liked the most about it - you were in the deep woods: no roads, no man made noises, just nature, and for me, once the 4 milers split off from the 10 milers, only an occasional other racer.  

I finished with a time of around 2:32.  After getting something to eat & drink (the watermelon really hit the spot!), a scrub down on my legs for the poison ivy was in order:

I hope this works!