Great Outdoor Blog

Umstead Trail Marathoners show that there’s more than one way to prepare for a 26.2-mile day

About five miles into Saturday’s Umstead Trail Marathon three vanguard Baby Boomers were running in single file. “This will be more miles today than I’ve run all month,” the guy in the lead said. His colleagues grunted in agreement.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad about my own preparation for the race.

During the running boom of the mid-1970s, you wouldn’t think of signing up for a marathon unless you’d been consistently logging a minimum of 45 miles a week. That, according to the website Training Science was considered the minimum mileage for not “hitting the wall” during a marathon’s final miles. That thinking demanded multiple “long” runs in a week, an approach that led to the notion of “junk miles,” or miles run simply for the sake of logging miles. In order to log the requisite miles, a marathoner typically had to follow a rigid schedule of daily workouts, which could take some of the joy out of running. As the three gentlemen on the Sycamore Trail illustrated, the thinking on marathon training has changed considerably since the days of Jim Fixx and Joan Benoit.

One of the more popular marathon training approaches is the Hal Higdon method. Since Higdon introduced his graduated training approach in 1993, he estimates he’s helped more than a half million people prepare for half or full marathons.
David Mackie of Cary embraced Higdon’s novice approach, an 18-week program that calls for gradually building up to 40 miles a week, logging one training run of 20 miles, and running only four times a week.
“I did it for two or three months,” Mackie said at packet pickup the day before the race. “In the second month, I had one bad run” — the kind that makes one question the wisdom of running 26.2 miles in one sitting — “but that was it. I feel prepared.”
And apparently he was. This was Mackie’s first Umstead Trail Marathon and he estimated he would finish in about four and a half hours. “Probably somewhere between 4 and 4:30,” he offered.
The 42-year-old Cary resident finished in 4 hours, 28 minutes and 47 seconds.
Despite running no more than 40 miles in one week, Mackie did not hit the wall at mile 20, as was the general belief in the ‘70s and ‘80s. If his approach is anathema to traditional thinking, it’s hard to imagine what the waffle trainer crowd would make of the latest, even more minimalist approach to marathon training.

CrossFit Endurance was created by cyclist Doug Katona and Brian MacKenzie, a former power lifter turned endurance athlete. It aims to make up in intensity what it lacks in longevity. The longest run prescribed in its training program is 90 minutes; the weekly training regimen is peppered with uber-intense CrossFit workouts. Weight and interval training are stressed, and workouts typically last between 10 and 20 minutes. That’s an attractive alternative to someone interested in training for a marathon, but who doesn’t have unlimited hours to invest on the trail.
Of course, those hours on the trail are the allure for many trail runners.
At first, Mark Manz appears the antithesis of the dedicated marathoner.
“The less structure I follow, the better I do with things,” says the 27-year-old Cary resident.
But as he elaborates on his training approach, it’s apparent that structure doesn’t necessarily equate to commitment.
“I get done with work at 3 o’clock, so then I may run for an hour and a half or two hours,” says Manz, who won the 2012 Umstead Trail Marathon in a time of 3 hours, 36 seconds — a 6:54 per mile pace. “I do my long runs on the weekend.”
He averages 140 to 150 miles a week, and notes that “every time I try to do less but make my workouts more intense, I get injured.”

Of course, how you define marathon runner also enters into the equation. In 1980, 166,741 people participated in marathons worldwide, according to the Association of Road Racing Statisticians. Last year, that number had swelled to more than 1.6 million. Similarly, the number of events during that time grew from 678 to 3,586.
At least part of that rise can be attributed to a psychological shift in how we approach 26.2 miles. In 1980, walking a portion of the race was considered a last resort, a concession to poor preparation. Today, it’s not unusual to see people walking from the start (although cutoffs in most races — it was 6 hours Saturday at Umstead — encourage at least fast walking). The topic of marathon walkers is hot fodder on online running forums. (Walking is also key to a training program pioneered by Jeff Galloway that gradually shifts participants from walkers to runners.)

Umstead, however, is not a typical marathon course. It takes place entirely on natural surface trail, some of which is rocky, rooty singletrack, and whereas some marathons go out of their way to create a fast (flat) course to draw PR-minded runners, Umstead seems to go out of its way in the opposite direction. At Mile 22, a point where runners are typically begging for mercy, Umstead throws in an out-and-back that involves the hardest climb of the day. Advises the race Website: “This is a challenging race with many hills and some single-track sections consisting of narrow trails with rocks and roots… . Some people love this sort of thing, but it is not for everyone.” Thus, the race tends to attract fewer walkers — at least intentional ones.
Scott Salger may epitomize the typical Umstead marathoner. An avid member and organizer of the Triangle Trail Runners Meetup group, Salger ran his first marathon in 2010 and has a 3:23 PR. He started training for Umstead in November, averaged 30 to 40 miles a week, peaking in the 50 to 60 neighborhood. He had a couple training runs in the 22-24 range. His preparation, in the loose parlance of marathon training, was enough to enjoy the run, not simply survive it.
“I’m going out for fun,” he said before the race. “To finish.”

By Joe Miller. When not running, biking, camping, hiking, paddling Joe writes extensively about the active lifestyle at GetGoingNC.

After Diane Van Deren finished her record-breaking run across North Carolina on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail last June 1, she did something she’d never done as a professional athlete.

She took a break.

Not because of her severely blistered feet, which were nearly devoid of skin, or because of the flexor tendon in her left foot, which “nearly wore through.” Not because her calorie-starved body had dug into its reserves and was consuming muscle, or because she averaged about three hours sleep a night during her three-week MST Endurance Run. And not because her entire 52-year-old body was simply worn out from more than three weeks covering nearly 1,000 miles of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, from 6,643-foot Clingman’s Dome on the Tennessee border to Jockey’s Ridge on the Outer Banks.

“With every event I’d ever done, as soon as I finished it was like, ‘OK, what’s next? What’s next on the schedule?” Van Deren said from her home outside Denver as she prepared to return to North Carolina in early February. The MST was something altogether different.

“With this,” she said, “I just wanted to take time to appreciate what I’d been through.”

During her 22 days, 5 hours and 3 minutes on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, Van Deren had been through a lot. The cold and wet of the Southern Appalachians, the heat and humidity of the Piedmont, and the violent weather of the coast (on her 20th day she had to outrun a tropical storm and a tornado), The North Face-sponsored elite athlete faced about every physical and mental challenge imaginable. But those challenges are a dime a dozen in Van Deren’s world, a world that includes everything from multiple finishes in the Hard Rock 100, arguably the toughest 100-mile ultra run in the country, to the 430-mile Yukon Arctic Ultra, a race in which Van Deren and her 50-pound sled broke through thin ice on a lake a day from the finish.

“It was just life-changing,” Van Deren said of her MST Endurance Run. “The people I met on this race, we developed a real trust in sharing stuff. We were very vulnerable with each other. I’ve never had an experience like this and I don’t know that I ever will.”

Van Deren returns to North Carolina the first week of February for a series of statewide appearances, starting with her Feb. 2 address to the annual meeting of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the non-profit spearheading completion of the trail. At present, just over half of the estimated 1,000-mile trail is complete, much of that in the mountains and Piedmont. The rest follows temporary routes, mostly along country roads. Van Deren’s run, sponsored by Great Outdoor Provision Co., was intended to accelerate the trail’s completion by raising awareness — and money.

According to Kate Dixon, executive director the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, Van Deren was successful on both counts.

“I think there were two big things to come from the run,” said Dixon. “We got a lot of new members, people in the state who were not aware of the trail, and we got a lot of national recognition.” National Geographic, for instance, included the MST in its Ultimate Adventure Bucket List for 2013.

“As an internationally competitive athlete, Diane elevated the MST to its rightful place among the world’s best trails,” said Chuck Millsaps, Minister of Culture with Great Outdoor Provision Co. and the expedition’s leader. “Diane’s expedition revealed this grand traverse as a transforming trek through our state’s rich beauty, history and culture welcoming others to come and discover.”

The run also exceeded its fundraising goal of $40,000.

While Van Deren did bow out of the Hard Rock 100, which took place a month and a half after she completed the MST Endurance Run, she didn’t sit around reflecting for long. In September, she competed in a 50-mile endurance run in Chile and in December logged one of her best 50-mile times ever, completing the San Francisco edition of the 50-mile North Face Endurance Challenge in 9 hours, 25 minutes, 1 second, a pace of 11 minutes 18 seconds per mile. She’s currently planning her race schedule for 2013. (One thing she says she won’t be doing again is another 1,000-mile run.)

An elite athlete learns from experience and uses that experience to battle through perceived obstacles. Van Deren’s experience on the MST helped her blow off what many of her San Francisco competitors found to be intimidating conditions.

“There was horrific rainfall, a downpour, there were flash-flood warnings, and they had to alter the course,” Van Deren recalled with a laugh. “I was the only runner going, ‘Huh. No problem.’ My attitude was, ‘Hey, I ran through a hurricane, this is nothing.’”

While there were other lessons from the MST run that will benefit Van Deren in future events, it’s the magic of a team effort that continues to leave the biggest impression. A competitor in one of sport’s loneliest endeavors, ultra distance running, Van Deren found herself handing over her fate to her GOPC team, from support crew chief Joel Fleming, who woke her in the morning and tucked her in at night, to logistics guru Amy Hamm, whose duties included tracking down baked salmon dinners in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, to her team of daily trail guides, to expedition leader Millsaps.

At times that support came in the form of helping Van Deren get her shoes off and her feet patched. At times it involved telling stories, cracking jokes and otherwise helping her pass the long hours on the trail. And at times it simply came to recognizing when Van Deren was in the zone and needed to be left alone.

“I just had to keep moving forward,” Van Deren says of the run. “To have someone who could look me in the eye and say, ‘Here’s the game plan,’ was huge.”

Said Millsaps, “Diane reminded us that it is not about being super human as much as it is about becoming a human being. As a team we discovered how adversity reveals the best gifts: endurance, creativity and gratitude.”

And, Van Deren is quick to add, unity. Though it’s just her name in the record book, she says the entry should read like the credits to a Hollywood blockbuster.

“I still feel it’s a ‘we’ thing, not a ‘me’ thing.”

* * *

Where to catch Diane

Diane Van Deren returns to North Carolina, the site of her record-breaking Mountains-to-Sea Trail Endurance Run, the first week of February. There are several opportunities to see her and hear her talk about the run, what she’s been up to since, and what’s in store for 2013.

Saturday, Feb. 2: Keynote speaker at the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail Annual Meeting in Saxapahaw. Details here.

Monday, Feb. 4: The Summit School in Winston-Salem, 7 p.m.

Tuesday, Feb. 5: Great Outdoor Provision Co. in Greensboro, 7:30 p.m.

Wedesday, Feb 6: Great Outdoor Provision Co. in Charlotte, 7:30 p.m.

It began in 1949 when Warren Miller, then a ski instructor in Sun Valley, Idaho, bought an 8 mm film camera and decided to make a little movie about life on the slopes. The finished product went over well with the folks who saw it in local halls and theaters, so he made another the following year. And so on and so on, a ritual that continues 63 years later, with the company Miller created (and left in 2004) still producing one greatly anticipated feature-length ski flick a year.

The genre Miller essentially created has, over the last 20 years, expanded greatly. An explosion of photogenic adventure pursuits — led by whitewater kayaking, rock climbing, bouldering, mountain biking, snowboarding and skateboarding — has provided the material, a similar explosion in sophisticated video technology available on the cheap has provided the means for aspiring dirtbag directors to load their buddies into the microbus and head to the gnarliest whitewater, the steepest drops, the most impossible routes to nab a few minutes of jaw-dropping footage.

The result: film festivals such as the Radical Reels Tour 2012, a collection of 11 short films representing the best action sport films to come out of the celebrated Banff Mountain Film Festival. This is the ninth annual Radical Reels Tour and will air Sept. 6 in Chapel Hill at the Varsity Theater and Sept. 7 at the Hanesbrands Theatre  in Winston-Salem.

The films, ranging in length from four to 22 minutes, cover a variety of pursuits: skiing, snowboarding, skateboarding, freeride mountain biking, whitewater kayaking and rock climbing. As you might guess from having seen similar shorts (or extreme videos on You Tube) the people behind the lens are often every bit as involved in the filming as the stars themselves.

Rush Sturges, for example, is the force behind “Frontier,” a 20-minute ode to whitewater kayaking around the globe. Sturges grew up on the Salmon River, won the Junior World Championships of freestyle kayaking in 2003 and continues to compete professionally — when he’s not on the river filming for his River Roots studio, which produced “Frontier.” (Or when he’s not performing adventure-themed hip-hop under the name AdrenalineRush).

Darrell Miller is a veteran of the modern ski filmmaking industry, best known for shooting in his native Jackson Hole, Wyoming. His “Miller’s Thriller: Ski BASE” focuses on the extreme of extreme skiing — ski BASE jumping, and also includes some vintage footage dating back to the early 1990s (older skiers will be reminded of how much has changed in just 20 years).

One of the more curious entries comes from bobsled-track-skateborder-for-hire Danny Strasser, a German whose 7-minute-long “Concrete Dreams” is basically him longboarding down some of Europe’s more renowned “bobtracks.” As his press notes note, “Bobtrack downhill skateboarding is a sport that didn’t actually exist— until Danny Strasser … .” Riveting for the first couple minutes, not so much for the last five.

Mountain bikers will like the collaborative work of The Coastal Crew and Anthill Films, the latter of which has compiled some of the best and most diverse fat tire footage around.

You’ll get a taste of the self-indulgence that occasionally infuses today’s adventure shorts (“Here We Go Again,” “Cat Skiing”) as well as a hilarious sendup of the same in Bill Donavan’s “Narsicame,” which salutes the work of the Narsicame Institute for Healing in its tireless effort to help the Hero cam addicted point the camera toward subjects other than themselves.

And there’s the topical. “Reel Rock: Race for the Nose,” winner of the Radical Reels People’s Choice Award takes a look at speed climbing, specifically Hans Florine and Dean Potter’s competition to be the fastest to scale Yosemite’s El Capitan. (The current record to ascend the 3,000-foot wall: 2 hours, 37 minutes, 5 seconds.) At 22 minutes, it’s the longest film in the Radical Reels collection and the one that passes quickest as it explores the ego and insanity of the anything-goes sport of speed climbing.

Eleven films, more than a half dozen disciplines, 109 minutes of total footage — coming September 6 and 7 to a theater near you (provided you live in the Triangle or Triad).

****

Info

Radical Reels showings

Thursday, September 6 – Chapel Hill, NC
Doors 6:30 / Show 7:00
Varsity Theater
123 East Franklin Street
Tickets: $15 “Pre-Sale” special at the Chapel Hill Eastgate GOPC; $17 online or at box office

Friday, September 7 – Winston Salem, NC
Doors 7:00 PM / Show 7:30 PM
Hanesbrands Theatre
209 North Spruce St.
Tickets: $15 “Pre-Sale” special at the Winston-Salem Thruway GOPC; $17 online or at box office

*****

Radical Reels lineup

All.I.Can: Perseverance (custom edit for the Radical Reels Tour)

Canada, 2011

8 minutes

Directed by: Dave Mossop, Eric Crosland

Produced by: Malcolm Sangster, Eric Crosland

Awards: Best Feature-length Mountain Film, Sponsored by Town of Banff

Website: http://sherpascinema.com

Quick hit: Mellow environmental theme in this pean to the beauty and beastliness of skiing. Features the usual ski bum suspects, as well as 76-year-old Mary Woodward, who skis 100-plus days a year and scoffs at anything that doesn’t involve deep powder.

The Art of Flight

USA, 2011

8 minutes

Produced and directed by: Curtis Morgan

Website: http://artofflightmovie.com/

Quick hit: Snowboarders, including Travis Rice, spend more time flying over the snow than plowing through it. Includes a guy riding the cables of a ski lift, as well as lots of high-def, slo-mo footage.

Cat Skiing

Canada, 2011

7 minutes

Produced and directed by: Darren Rayner, Callum Jelley, Mason Mashon

Website: www.voleurz.com

Quick hit: A bit self-indulgent with a set-up and a conceit that doesn’t seem relevant (see “Narsicame”), but otherwise lots of good snowboarding and skiing footage.

Concrete Dreams

Germany, 2011

7 minutes

Produced and directed by: Danny Strasser

Website: www.danny-strasser.de

Quick hit: Pretty much 7 minutes of Danny Strasser skateboarding (on a longboard) some of the more renowned “bobtracks” (“bobsled runs,” for the uninitiated) of Europe. Much of the footage shows Strasser grabbing his butt — understandably. Raises the question: How does he stop? Or even slow down?

From the Inside Out (custom edit for the Radical Reels Tour)

Canada, 2011

13 minutes

Directed by: Dylan Dunkerton, Kyle Norbraten, Curtis Robinson (The Coastal Crew)

Produced by: Ian Dunn, Kyle Norbraten, Darcy Wittenburg

Website: http://www.fromtheinsideout.secondbasefilms.com

Quick hit: Mountain bikers will love this look at freeriding in British Columbia and elsewhere, starting with how a trail is carved through a dense Pacific Northwest forest, then on to the riding. They make it look so easy!

Frontier (custom edit for the Radical Reels Tour)

USA, 2010

20 minutes

Produced & directed by: Rush Sturges

Website: www.river-roots.com

Quick hit: Includes jaw-dropping footage of whitewater kayakers frolicking in big, ugly water, of course, but also some insight into why these guys do what they do and how they do it. It’s like “solving a puzzle” one kayaker offers.

Here We Go Again (custom edit for the Radical Reels Tour)

USA, 2010

10 minutes

Directed by: Don Hampton, Gardy Raymond

Produced by: Don Hampton

Website: www.dh-productions.com

Quick hit: Guys in jeans and lumberjack shirts doing circle loops on rollers, wipe outs on jumps, shooting cans of Red Bull full of holes in the woods. Another “Narsicame” candidate, but fun.

Miller’s Thriller: Ski BASE

USA, 2010

6 minutes

Produced and directed by: Darrell Miller

Website: www.stormshow.com

Quick hit: Darrell Miller grew up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and he uses his familiarity with the terrain to shoot riveting ski BASE jumps.

Narsicame

USA, 2011

4 minutes

Produced and directed by: Bill Donavan

Website: www.dangerouscircus.com

Quick hit: You no doubt know this person, you may well be this person: he/she (but more than likely “he”) can’t make a move on his bike/board/boat without documenting it on his Hero cam. This 4-minute public service announcement from the Narsicame Institute for Healing may be the first step toward ignoring the flashing red light.

Reel Rock: Race for the Nose

USA, 2011

22 minutes

Produced & directed by: Nick Rosen, Peter Mortimer

Website: www.senderfilms.com

Awards: Radical Reels People’s Choice Award

Quick hit: It is perhaps the craziest type of competition in the adrenal arts: speed climbing. Especially when it comes to the likes of trying to be the fastest up the 3,000-vertical-foot Nose route of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. This film looks specifically at the competition between Hans Florine and Dean Potter’s ego as they attempt to break the current record of 2 hours, 37 minutes and 5 seconds. As one observer in the film notes: “Anything goes, pulling on gear, stepping on somebody … .”

Whitewater Grand Prix

Canada, 2011

4 minutes

Produced by: Patrick Camblin

Directed by: Patrick Camblin / Tribe Alliance

Website: www.triberiders.ca

Quick hit: Six elite kayakers participate in a six-stage competition on some of the biggest, widest, tallest, roiliest whitewater around. Some fun footage as well, such as an overhead shot of gull in the foreground that appears to be pacing one of the paddlers below.

Written by Sean Oakley, Footwear Expert at Charlotte GOPC

Running has always been a somewhat selfish venture for me. Whether for stress relief, health reasons or just to get outdoors, it has always been a very personal endeavor. Inspired by the recent record setting run on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail by Diane Van Deren – which she used to help raise money and awareness to help complete the trail – I have sought out ways to use my passion for running to help others.

Great Outdoor Provision Co. has been outfitting and sponsoring the Extreme Hike for the Cure of Cystic Fibrosis for the past several years. I have personally outfitted hikers for the two previous events, and in doing so made loose promises that I would one day participate – perhaps even run it. The passion and excitement the people I met had for finding a cure for Cystic Fibrosis was contagious. As they pointed out to me, we all probably know someone who suffers from CF. I indeed found out a few months ago that they were correct – two very close old friends of mine in Raleigh have a beautiful daughter who was born with Cystic Fibrosis.

CF is inherited and affects the digestive system and lungs. Lung infections are common and life threatening, and the body has increased difficulty breaking down and absorbing food. The good news is that there are many incredibly motivated people searching for a cure, and thanks to the CF Foundation, they are getting much needed funds. The Extreme Hike is one fundraiser that has been very successful at getting money raised and into the right hands. A majority of the drugs that help folks live longer with CF were funded by the CF Foundation. But there is no cure yet, so more money is needed.

Originally started by three friends in 2009 as a way to get outdoors and raise funds for CF research, the Extreme Hike has grown tremendously in the past three years. It has expanded to include hikes in Massachusetts and the hope is to set one up out west as well. The Appalachian Trail has been the setting for the two previous Extreme Hikes, and this fall marks the move to the Art Loeb Trail. Generally considered one of the most technical and difficult trails in our region, most hikers take on the 30.1 mile trail over 2-3 days. Some would say that the word “extreme” gets used a little too liberally – not on this hike! Fewer people have completed the Art Loeb in one day than have reached the summit of Everest. I have decided to up the ante and combine my love for trail running with this very well organized hike and attempt to run a majority of the trail – all to help raise funds for Cystic Fibrosis research.

The furthest distance I have ever run is a marathon, 26.2 miles. This run will push me into “ultra” territory, which is generally considered any run further than a marathon. My love for running is renewed, but my goals are far different than ever before. I am taking on a distance further than I have ever run on a trail, and more difficult than any I have traversed. But the training runs have gotten surprisingly easier – no amount of pain or exhaustion can keep me down for too long. I just need to remind myself that every day I wake up free of the ailments that CF sufferers face, and the next step I take becomes a lot lighter and easier.

If you would like to donate to the Extreme Hike for the Cure of CF, please donate here. Donations are tax deductible and can be made with credit card.

Please visit www.cff.org to learn more about the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Since beginning my career in outdoor retail back in July of 2010, the barefoot/minimalist shoe market has blown up. There were some days where it seemed like all I did was fit people for Vibram FiveFingers. For many customers the door to running was being opened in a new, more natural way. I was both fascinated and skeptical.

I got back to running regularly in 2009. The credit goes to catharsis over fitness, albeit just slightly. I was in the worst work situation of my life and was going through what might best be described as a one-third life crisis. I was falling apart and not sure of much except this: I loved being in the woods and running made me feel like I was going somewhere at a time when I felt stuck. So I became a trail-runner — a very passionate one.

Many changes followed, including leaving a 12 year career and becoming Paddlesports Manager at Great Outdoor Provision Co. Now my trail-running has become a significant way to speak from experience with customers about what they should consider when it comes to footwear.

The recent return to natural running forms and experiences is a good one. While a lot of folks around me were jumping into the minimal experience with both feet (pun intended) I hung out on the sidelines. I was already a middle/forward foot striker and I was perfectly content with my Brooks Cascadias. What I was missing out on was the feel-response experience. I patiently held off, reading and processing the new and growing conversation about minimal shoes. By this time professors of biomechanics were weighing in on the discussion. That’s when I came across the Brooks PureProject.

The Brooks attitude toward minimal running mirrored my own. Instead of following the crowd and the hype, Brooks was patiently and thoughtfully considering what would be best for a runner’s body. Philosophically that meant a lot to me. Finally, this March I got my first pair of minimal shoes. The Brooks PureGrits. Just when I thought my run experience couldn’t get any better, it did.

The lightness of the shoe, paired with its soft 4mm midsole offset is like having nothing on. Yet the duo of BioMogo and Brooks DNA allow your foot to hug every root and rock without discomfort. The cushiony ride along with the Ideal Heal allows for an explosive kick with each step. Then the Toe Flex design allows for good push without stressing the toes. I have chronic metatarsal dislocation in my right foot, and this has alleviated it significantly.

Light, comfortable, and explosive. These are my top three adjectives for this shoe. I feel more nimble and confident moving through varied terrain and over rocks, roots, and the occasional fallen tree. I also have a greater sense of contact with the trail. These shoes bite and launch which translates into greater run-efficiency. If you’re a trail runner looking for a minimal shoes that doesn’t sacrifice on comfort and packs in a load of technical benefits, the PureGrits are the shoe for you.

My favorite way to start the day is to get in a trail run. For this southern boy the best thing on the menu is Grits…PureGrits.

By Zach Roberts, Trusty’s Paddlesports Manager in Greensboro and contributing editor of www.thetriadadventuregroup.wordpress.com

Great Outdoor Provision Co. is excited to return as a sponsor of the River Bound Race Series, a joint production of N.C. Outward Bound School and U.S. National Whitewater Center. The four-race series takes place on the 400 acres/14 mile trails at the Whitewater Center as a fundraiser for the N.C. Outward Bound Scholarships.

For more information, please visit the official race site at www.riverboundrace.com.

>> Click here to register

Dates and Events:

• March 10th (5K)
• May 19nd (10k)
• July 21th (15k)
• September 22th (Half Marathon)

Sign up for all 4 races and save!

Back From The Edge: Diane Van Deren’s Spirited Life and Adventures

Tuesday, October 4, 2011
7 PM @ KINGS
14 West Martin St • Raleigh, NC 27601

General Admission tickets are FREE but in order to accommodate guests we ask that you register for the event online

Reserved Seating $8
VIP reception at 6pm $20 (includes reserved seating)

Ultrarunner Diane Van Deren spent ten years racked by epilepsy, but radical brain surgery gifted her with a seizure-free life and a super-human endurance that has driven her to win grueling events like the 2009 Yukon Arctic Ultra, a 430 mile foot race across a frozen wilderness.

In 2010 she turned to mountaineering and climbed South America’s tallest peak, Aconcagua. On this expedition, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester wired her up and monitored her movements to see what sets her apart form other athletes. Medical science is intrigued by Diane Van Deren: a survivor, a peak performer and a wife and mother of three. Her inspirational story will intrigue you and drive you to strive for your personal best.

We are excited to support the 2nd annual Mountains-to-Sea Trail 12-Mile Challenge.

April 9, 2011 @ 8:00am
Early Packet Pick-up at Bull City Running:
April 8 @ 4-6:30pm

Race Day Packet Pick-up at Start: 6:15-7:45am

>> INFO & Registration

2010 River Bound Race Series

The 2010 River Bound Race Series is a signature trail running race series featuring some of the most scenic and challenging trails in the entire Southeastern United States.

This race series raised money for North Carolina Outward Bound

The River Bound Race Series is a joint production of the U.S. National Whitewater Center (USNWCandNorth Carolina Outward Bound (NCOB).

What do a micro-biologist, EMT, and a Mule have in common?  Rank body odor for starters!  This weekend Trusty is embedded within a team of 12 runners who will hoof it 208 miles in the 2010 Blue Ridge Relay.  The BRR208, one of the longest running relay races in the United States, starts at Grayson Highlands State Park in Virginia and winds its way through North Carloina’s mountains to the finish in downtown Asheville on Saturday morning. Brooks Running is among the sponsors for Trusty who is clad in the Brooks Cascadia running shoes.  Follow the action via twitter.com/TrustyGOPC