by Xar Adelberg – A few weeks before the race: I’d heard of the twelve-mile Seven Sisters Trail Race through my friends, the Trail Monsters. It seemed like a good idea, not so much race-wise but conditioning-wise. I was interested in doing a longish speed-hike without carrying a pack, and in the asskick of the relentless steep hills. The idea of doing it alone but in a group seemed just right. I’d read Ian’s fabulous report in awe, and was quite aware that I was probably going to be on the course for longer than the vast majority of other [READ MORE]
May 102012
Apr 302012
The 2004 Muddy Moose was the first trail race I ran in the US, just a few weeks after Emma and I moved to Maine from Scotland. Today was the 6th time I’ve run this race, which is more times than any other race I’ve done. Why? That’s a good question. To be honest, the course isn’t that great. Apart from a 1/3 mile stretch of single-track it’s mostly logging roads or Jeep trails with about 3 miles of dirt road. The whole race course is a bit contrived, I don’t think anyone ever says “hey, lets go for a [READ MORE]
Ryan asked me last evening if I had gotten the email about the change in course for the TARC 50k. Hmmm. Nope, hadn’t realized that. Turns out they had decided to change the course to make the loop a “certified” 10k, meaning the 50k would be in fact a true 50k and not the 32.7ish miles I had been anticipating based on research from last year’s results. OK, a slight change in plans, but hey, I’ll take 31 versus 32.7 any day! After getting up at 5:30 with Sam this morning, we headed over to Weston from his parent’s house, [READ MORE]
Light Up or Leave Me Alone By Randy Woods Review of Nathan Sports Photon LED Reflective Vest I bought my first Nathan LED equipped reflective vest at Maine Running Company in Portland in early 2011. I run to work most days and my job starts in the pre-dawn hours. I wear a headlamp every day and before I got the reflective vest I always used a clip-on light or two. I wasn’t really shopping for a reflective running vest, but I bought it the first time I saw it because it looked like something I could wear year round to [READ MORE]
This weekend I went to Merrimac Mass to run a trail race. This was my first time at this race and it was great to see a bunch of familiar faces with all the Trail Monsters that showed up. The out and back would give me a chance to cheer them on as they passed me…..of course they cheered me on too. Wholly Crap…….The Merrimac river race was so much different than I imagined. My intent was to start conservative, use the 5 mile out as a sort of a warm up, try and weather the returning hills then race the [READ MORE]
Mar 102012
by Ian Parlin The days leading up to the final race of the Bradbury Mountain Snowshoe Series were an extravaganza of snowshoeing with 6-8 inches falling on Thursday, but by race day we were just lucky enough to be able to pull off the race with minimal snow coverage in a lot of places. On Thursday I got out near the end of the storm for a 5.5 mile snowshoe run on some local trails. I learned that the worn-down-then-sharpened cleats on my snowshoes no longer gripped the deep snow, but at least the trails would be packed before the [READ MORE]
TMR TNR
7 Sisters Trail Race
