Grand-Further Mountain Race Recap: Making New Trail Running Friends

In August and September, I took part in two races put on by Tanawha Adventures the Grand-Further Mountain Run and Table Rock Ultras 50k. This is the first post on the Grand-Further Mountain Run on August 26, 2017.

Grand-Further Mountain was a solid trail race up and down, and up and down, Grandfather Mountain, an almost 6,000 ft. mountain near Boone, NC. While billed as a 25k race (15 miles), no one’s GPS got more than 13.5 miles so basically no one has any idea how long it actually was. What everyone could agree on is that it was one gnarly race that involved a whole lot of power hiking with it’s over 4,200 ft of climbing, rock fields and sets of ladders.

The night before the race I stopped by Appalachian Brewing Company in Boone, NC to pick up my race bib and t-shirt, (plus a four pack of Mountains-to-Sea White Dot Session IPA.) After that I went to the Grandfather Family Campground where I was meeting up with a group of Raleigh Trail Runners, only one of whom I really knew, my friend Josh. Josh was planning an epic 50 mile training run the next day as part of his training for the Yeti 100 miler. Two others were going to be running the same race as me, and then a half dozen were coming out to camp, hang out, and run a half marathon distance or so as a group. I set up camp and hung out with Josh and met his friends when they arrived, (plus I heard some epic running stories about Josh-led excursions…) The two other racers, Chris and Allison, and I made a plan for getting to the race start in the morning and then I headed to my tent on a cool late August night.

Camping just minutes from the race start was really nice, and meant that it wasn’t a super early morning, plenty of time to eat and get ready on a chilly morning. At the race start I saw a few fast Asheville runners that I recognized so I guessed it might be a pretty competitive race up front. I placed myself towards the middle to back of the group at the start and all of a sudden we started the race and a herd of us were heading towards the trail head. I wasn’t in any rush, I knew there would be some bottlenecks on the trail.

Writing this recap a little late, I don’t remember all the details, but a couple miles in I was in step with a woman from Fort Mill, SC and we started chatting. Kristen and I ended up running the whole race together and had some great conversation along the way about her kiddos and our different running journeys and career paths. It is those connections made while your quads are screaming at you, that distract you from the pain and remind you why this community is so wonderful. The foggy morning meant that we didn’t have the most incredible views at the top of the mountain, but it still conveyed that top of the world feeling that only hiking and scrambling up rocks and ladders can give you.

We went up and over the mountain, down and around another trail, and back up and over to come back down on the trail we started on. (Not sure I explained that well, basically we climbed the mountain twice.) I saw a few familiar faces on the trail and my new friend knew some people working the aid stations. The cloud cover and cool temperature made for a great race weather. I managed to keep my legs under me as we bounded down the rocks towards the finish, feeling really good and like I could have gone faster had I not wanted to stick with Kristen. Once we’d all finished, I reconnected with the group I started out with and we enjoyed our post race beers together at App Brewing Company to cap off a pretty fun 24 hours of making new friends in the trail running community!

Bottom line: If you don’t mind that the race was probably only 50% runnable and 50% hiking, the trails are incredible and the race was really well done!