Great Outdoor Blog

Carolina Godiva Track Club and Great Outdoor Provision Co. welcome Brooks Running to the 6th Annual Umstead Trail Marathon.   All 26.2 miles of the marathon will be run within the borders of William B. Umstead State Park on Saturday, March 7th.   We have 5 staff that will be running those miles in the Brooks Cascadia or Adrenaline ASR and SmartWool socks. Chuck Millsaps has considered one on each foot as he loves the performance of both shoes. “It’s a tough choice between the two.  During my training I have used 2 pair of Cascadia and 1 pair of the ASR.  I am currently running in the ASR but will it will be game day decision.”

Both the Brooks Cascadia (l) and Brooks Adrenaline ASR (r) are ideal for the terrain of the Umstead Trail Marathon.  The course consists of some technical single track covering portions of Company Mill and Sycamore Trails.   But most is on the park’s bridle trails which are the width of a single lane road and covered with fine gravel.  It’s a challenging course with many hills and the sections of single track include features such as “The Devil’s Spine” and “Shut In Simulator” that exact a toll on the runners.

A couple of trivia points if you are curious.

• The cut off time for the course is six hours.
• The course record was set in 2007 in a blistering time of 2:40:35 by Paul DeWitt.
• Previous course record set in 2005 by Mike Aldrink in a time of 2:50:59.  (Fun side note about Mike – he placed 3rd in the 2007 Krispy Kreme Challenge with a time of 28:14 after running 2 miles, eating 12 doughnuts and running  2 mile to finish.)
• This year’s Umstead race capped out with a field of 200 runners who will start at 9:00am on Saturday, March 7th.  Spectators are welcome and  may park at any of the Umstead paved parking lots and run, walk, or ride in the park to see the marathon.   Remember there are no bikes allowed on the hiking trails.  The Graylyn aid station is a good vantage point as you see both mile 6.5 and mile 14.8.  A course map is available at www.umsteadmarathon.com/umstead2006map.jpg

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Outdoor Events, Trail Running, Gear Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.