100 Mile Ultra Slam at Manssanutten Mountains?
I love point-to-point non-repetitive courses, so I pay attention to Massanutten Mountain Tails 100 Miles and Old Dominion 100 Miles (a loop course), and other such 100 milers. I also find out there is an Old Dominion Memorial 100 Miles and the story between the two Old Dominion runs (see The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning).
Most amazing to me is these three races are at consecutive weekends around Memorial Day and their courses are all at the Massanutten Mountains or so called Shenandoah National Park.
| Massanutten Mountain Tails 100 Miles | A week before |
| Old Dominion Memorial 100 Miles | Memorial Day weekend |
| Old Dominion 100 Miles | A week after |
I work and live in California, so I'd like to see if I can find a short business project for me to conquer them all at a time. The problem is I'll miss my local favorite run Ohlone Wilderness 50K, which I'd like to do every year.
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4 comments:
I've always wondered about why there are these 3 races all around the same time of year in the same area, 2 with almost the same name. Like, is there some sort of unfriendly rivalry between all them? I'm tempted to ask the RDs what's up. From the maximization of participation point of view, it would make a lot more sense for at least one of them to be held at a different time of year. I've been thinking of trying to combine a trip to see my sister, who lives a few hours away, with one of these runs, but they're all in May, when there's already too many runs in the Bay Area. Chihping--you should go for it and maybe become the first to do the Triple Virginia Slam...
Mark,
I did ask OD RD - Ray Waldron (olddominionrun@gmail.com) about this. I was wondering why there were so few runners in the past years, given that this was a nice course (I love it). At that time, I was not aware of this rivalry. Now you point it out.
The following is his reply,
As for the number of runners, there is another race one week ahead of ours which uses almost the exact same name as ours. They take about half of the folks who would otherwise run with us. So if we have 15 - 20 runners, we could have had 30- 40 runners. We have asked them to change their name or at least make it blatantly obvious we are not the same race, but they won't do it. It is one of the situations we have to work with.
My wife was a little unhappy when I told her I sent out the Wasatch Front, but she seems OK now after I explained the race takes only three days - same as RDL.
I guess I'll bring up OD some time later.
Mark,
Perhaps if I mention Mark will do OD, my wife will probably be happier to let me go. She sometimes complains that I usually go by myself for a 100 miler trip. Mark, maybe you can say the same to your wife :-)
Chihping
Excellent idea! You are getting into a complete different league of ultrarunners now! Maybe training runs with Catra are rubbing off? :-)
Good luck, and as always, it will be a pleasure to read your reports!
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