1999 Rockin K Trail Runs
April
3, 1999
Kanopolis
State Park, Kansas
The
first edition of the Rockin' K is in the bag. The run proved to be very
interesting indeed. Spring weather cooperated in a normal fashion by dropping
the temperatures from a sunny 82 degrees on Thursday to 37 degrees with
overnight thunder storms and a friendly 20 MPH north breeze at the 6:00 A.M.
start. Temperatures would never climb out of the mid-forties all day. The big
prerace dinner conversation topic was "What are you going to wear"
and on Saturday morning it looked like everyone except a couple of fast guys
were wearing and butt-packing everything they owned!!
The Rockin' K is a multi-use trail through the prairie around Kanopolis state
park. The run is a double loop 50 mile and single loop marathon with a short
out and back road section to make the marathon distance (please note the R.D. (MY)
definition of trail marathon means something more than 26.2 miles but not 50K)
. The course has many short steep climbs mixed with a light sprinkling of sand,
rocks and mostly dry low water crossings. It is a true prairie run through the
open range with very few trees to trash up the views. This also gave the
runners the full benefit of the light cooling breezes. The trail had one
unmanned, and one manned aid station, so the runners had to pack heavy or
suffer the consequences. The runners responded to the weather in admirable
fashion with no wimp outs. We had nine people start the 50 mile with three
opting for the marathon distance at the turn around. All of the marathon
starters finished so we had no DNF's on the day.
In the 50 mile Marc Freisen and Todd Nott, running his first 50 mile trail
race, started fast and stayed that way. Marc and Todd were even at the first
aid station with Todd gapping Marc by 5 minutes at the half. This turned into
16 minute at the manned aid station (second time through at about 42 miles)
with Marc pulling Todd back in to about 11 minutes at the finish. In the
marathon Mark Crisman was desperately trying to hold off Randy Albrecht for
(what he thought to be) third place when at the finish the first two people
turned out to be the 50 mile runners, so third suddenly was first and Randy was
1:20 behind in second. We had no females finish the 50 mile distance. On the
marathon side Joan Moore was first in 5:30:48. In the prerace talk I had
mentioned that at the Rockin' K no runner will ever be charged extra entry fees
for any additional miles run. In true ultrarunner fashion Larry Ridgeway
responded by getting four or five extra miles for free!!! The runners turned an
ugly day into a first class performance.
From the R.D. side this was the first ultra Stacy and I have done, it was a
refreshing change from the five mile road race and 6-1/2 mile trail races we
put on. The runners, with one exception, were not whiny and did the day for
what it was. When I was cleaning up the trail markers Sunday I did not find a
single piece of litter that I could attribute to the runners, unless they had
beer and cigs in their butt packs. This is especially noteworthy because
littering was not something that I had mentioned prerace or in the entry.
Phil
Sheridan R.D.