Sunday was my first running of the Blues Cruise 50k Trail run in Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful run consisting f one large loop around Blue Marsh Lake - a man made lake just north of Reading Pa. The idea of one loop around the lake really appealed to me and was a big factor in signing up. Unfortunately there weren't many sightings of the actual lake - yet the few we saw were breathtaking and well worth the wait. The trails themselves wander through typical Pennsylvania country - which is to say beautiful and rugged. This is some of my favorite country to run through. Untypical for this are were the fairly nontechnical trails - not too many roots and not too rocky. Very nice for my tired feet which have taken a beating from the last few races. This made for some fine running and helped offset the surprisingly summer like heat and the unrelenting hills that made up the majority of the course. None of the hills by themselves were "deal breakers" but there were plenty of them and they added up through the course of the day. I ran using the Galloway method of 2:30 of running and :30 of walking and this allowed me to run many of the hills that I might have normally walked and made for a great workout by the end of the day.
There were 7 aid stations on the course and each one had a different theme with volunteers wearing different costumes - this definitely helped the day pass and their enthusiasm and top-notch aid service made each station a pleasure to run into. Aches and pains were easily forgotten in the fun. Thanks guys!
Again I used Tailwind Nutrition as my primary fuel along with 4 or 5 banana quarters and it worked great in the heat and helped me bring the race in at around 6:31 feeling pretty fresh and happy. What left me a little unhappy were the bee stings - 3 of them - again. It's not the bee stings themselves that are so bad (ok, they hurt) it's the two weeks of itching that make me take things a little personally. Fortunately the were wasps and wasps don't die after they sting - they just go one and sting some more. But I am happy they don't die even if one was responsible for stinging me twice. I believe this brings the total up to 14 stings for the year - that may be a PR.
So to sum things up - beautiful course, fun aid stations and a terrific group of runners made for a perfect day. Including the bee stings. It's not a trail race without a little misadventure.
Peace,
Eric
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