Traprock 50K

Announcing the inaugural Traprock 50K trail race! The race will be the weekend of April 3-4, 2010!

The Goat and I have been wanting to host an ultramarathon in Connecticut for awhile now, and we decided to finally do it this Spring. The idea was to hold it in early April as a tune up for the race season. The problem has been nailing down the exact date. We were focused on April 3 at the West Hartford Reservoir, but I learned today that the Hartford Track Club is hosting a race there on the same day...a quarter marathon. So, we may need to move the date to April 4...stay tuned. The following weekend is likely to be the date for the Northern Nipmuck trail race, so we don't want to conflict with that great race (especially since my ultramentor Jimmy C. is the Race Director).

Our original plan was to use Fatass format...as in no entry fees, no amenities, just show up and run. We recently decided to charge a nominal entry fee to cover any costs and to allow us to provide awards and possibly t-shirts, etc. We will be keeping the price as low as possible.

Our plan is to run 3 loops of approximately 10 miles each through the reservoir. There is one big climb per loop. The rest of the course is rolling terrain with beautiful scenery. It is a combination of double-track and single-track with a portion of the race run on the historic Metacomet Trail along Connecticut's beautiful traprock ridge. There will be some wet spots on the course in early April and possibly some snow and ice which should make for interesting footing. We'd love to do an "out and back course" to cover more of the beautiful terrain in central CT, but road crossings make this somewhat prohibitive. We may decide to tackle that issue in a future version of the race, but decided to start small this first year.

So, put this race on your calendar! Come on out and meet the infamous Goat! It will be great fun! We'll have fully stocked aid stations approximately every 5 miles and may even throw in another aid station along the way.

Check out our Facebook page or go to http://www.traprock50.com/ for more info.

We need feedback from you, the running community. Tell us what you want and we'll try to deliver. Tell us your preferred start time. I'm thinking 9:30AM would be good for folks that are driving from a fair distance and will still allow enough time for everyone to finish in daylight. Tell us if you want t-shirts. Tell us what you consider to be "must-have's" for a race of this nature.

We aim to make this a great event for the ultrarunning community and would like to expand it to include a 50 miler at some point, so your input is important. Please let us know if you are interested in running or volunteering for the Traprock 50K!

See you on the trails.