Race Reports

By Nancy Shura-Dervin, RD At the Bulldog 50K Ultra Run, we expect surprises but none were to come this year!  The 23-year-old ultra run was a perfect day for 490 …

The Cloudsplitter 100, Kentucky’s first 100-mile trail race, took place on Pine Mountain the weekend of October 4-5. In true Appalachian fashion, the race started out with a bang from a black powder rifle. Some 156 participants among the four distances ran from Elkhorn City up the mountain on old, rough and rugged pioneer roads and through dense rhododendron thickets.

“What the hell?” was the only sentiment I could muster as we sat staring blankly through the early morning darkness at the very large tree blocking our path. I had planned for many contingencies; this wasn’t among them. Dennis Deane has been helping at our events since the very first one. Together we have worked through any number of race day snafus, but this one left us, well, stumped.

The idea of doing this iconic event sprang up a few weeks after the Trans Rockies multi-day run in 2013 – after the brain had suppressed the pain of that undertaking. But then a fi ve-day stay in the ICU at Johns Hopkins hospital after a “cardiac event” in December put a lot more than just completing this event into question for me.