This was the 3rd. running of the Hobo Run 50/25K. I was there the first year this was run in 04' because this was the first Ultra
that was run in my hometown of Rockford. Rockford has been home to distance runners Jenny Spangler , 96' winner of the Olympic
Trials Marathon & Tom Antczak past winner of the Houston Marathon.
The Hobo Run takes place on the beautiful Ski , Hiking & Horse trails of Rock Cut State Park. The course is a two loop course that is relatively flat by trail standards , but has a few surprising twist & turns, like the flight of wooden stairs that has to be climbed twice along the way to complete the race. In my opinion if Huntsville is a 3 on a scale of 1-10 difficulty factor, Rock Cut is a 4 , so not too bad at all. The course has a few shallow creek crossings , that are just enough to get your tootsies wet during a good rain , that unfortunately we did have most of the week & race morning, which brings me to that.
Race morning : I knew the park was going to be a tad muddy due to the rain Rockford had all week & especially race morning. It was raining on the way to the park fairly hard. It was just a short drive to the park, staying at a cousins house made this real convenient. The rain stopped shortly before the start of the 50K , which started at 8 am, the 25K started an hour later.Considering all the rain that had fallen in the days before the course had only a few bad areas that were sloppy. The rain had stopped & then the sun came out about 2-3 hours into the race & I though ..oh boy here comes the heat like 2 years ago, but with the sun came a nice cool northern breeze that lasted all day long. I overheat very e-z & I never even came close to that, very good temps. I would say low of low 50's & I dont think the high ever got much past 60 degerees !
The Race : I thought to start slow , figuring the sun & humidity could be a factor later in the day...never happened, the humidity that is. I started doing about 11:15 miles . For me that's a little fast for a 50K , but the fiirst 4 miles is pancake flat , so that seemed about right at the moment , of course looking back it WAS too fast..oh well that first loop went smooth ( 3:04 ).
Second Loop : I was a little disappointed that energy drink HEED was promised at all the aid stations , but only the start/finish
had the energy drink. The Aid sations were manned by the local High School runners, part of the race fee was benefiting their schools programs. I want to say about mile 21 ( every mile was marked w/ Pie Plates ) I started to run out of gas, it was a struggle from there on in. I was very happy that I had no cramps, nausea, heat stress. These are the usual things that get me , but it was not painful , I just plain ran out of gas..tired , plain & simple. I jogged it in to a finishing time of 6:36:27..Ah , not what I wanted, but it was my 2nd. fastest 50K in 10 trys & it was 40 minutes faster than my effort there 2 years ago. I was 41st of about 56, compared to next to last 2 years ago, so I guess I will take it, I have no choice not to.
I really enjoyed some of the changes over 2 years ago, especially the pie plates marking every mile, xtra aid stations .But there were a few that I did not care for. I did not care for Heed bing advertised at the major aid staations , but only at one. The Hobo Stew ,where you bring the can of Veggies & they supply the meat. They did not have any meat this year... something about not being able to cook it this year. I thought the Finishers shirt distribution was handled wrong. They gave them out in order of how people finished. They had a lot of 25k'ers sign up that day, so they got the Finisher's shirt first. I have to wait for my shirt to be mailed to me even though I registered 3 months in adavance & I ran the longer race..oh well, bad planning on their part.
Overall , the race Director is a great guy , he puts on a great race despite a few tweeks that need to be looked at . This is a great low key race in a beautful park, that happens to be in my cousins back yard & my home town. I did get my Hobo Run Socks..that does not even have holes, my Hobo Bandana & an e-mail that promises my finisher's shirt will be mailed to me soon. Hey, what more can you ask for, other than a future promise to take out those two flights of @#$%#@*& Wooden Steps !
Enjoy if you should happen to hop a train & go Hobo !