I ended up running the Oak Mountain 50K partly as the result of a miscalculation. I’d run the Black Mountain Marathon the previous year, really liked that race, and planned to run it again in 2000. What I didn’t realize was that Black Mountain and the accompanying Mt Mitchell Challenge would become so popular that I would miss the registration period for those races. With Black Mountain full, I began to look around for an alternative race.
2000
would be the first year for the Oak Mountain 50K, held at the Alabama state
park near Birmingham. The race looked to have an interesting loop course and
wasn’t too far from home. Normally, one should probably skip the first year of
any new race to let the organizers work out the bugs, but in this case, things
worked out well.
As
was typical of my race training for that era, there were lots of backpacking
trips the previous fall and winter. Most of my long runs were either tempo runs
on Knoxville’s Lakeshore Greenway, or trail runs in the Townsend Y area of the
Smokies. The good news was that my training times on the Smokies runs were
significantly faster than the prior winter. But I didn’t do any runs over 20
miles in training, and that would come back to haunt me.
I
was running a lot with my friend Steven who also entered Oak Mtn. We decided to
drive down together, split a motel the night before, and then drive home after
the race. On the way down we stopped off at Mt. Cheaha State Park, so that we
could bag the Alabama State high point in a light rain and grab some lunch at
the park.
The
course is advertised as mostly single track, with two 600’ climbs and a total
of 3900’ of climbing. The course was changed slightly in 2012, but both
versions may be slightly longer than 50K. The footing overall was good and the
grades moderate. The course was mostly single track with some dirt road between
aid stations 3 and 4. The aid stations were well stocked and well manned. We
would see lots of hikers, and later in the day, lots of mountain bikers. The
temperatures dropped all through race day from ~65F at the start to <50F at
the finish. I wore shorts and a t-shirt, and put on gloves after finishing the
Blue Trail. The trails ran through mostly pine-oak forest.
The old version of the Oak Mountain 50K course map.
I
found the start of the course to be rugged with the trail dropping in and out
of an endless series of small draws along the north face of the mountain for
the first ~ 5 miles. The yellow trail became easier after crossing a dirt road.
We then weaved through the chaos of a huge boy scout camp. I ran with Steve,
only walking a few uphills to Aid #1(North Trailhead) at 8 miles in 81 minutes.
Steve then moved ahead to join a group of 5 on the Blue Trail, and I dropped
back but tried to follow them. Just past the orange connector, around mile 11
or 12, the IT band in my right knee began to flare up. Soon I was reduced to
walking the downhills, though one quirk of IT pain is that it allows running
uphills. I was still moving well enough to pass another runner, and still saw
Steve at Aid #2 (Peavine) at about 2:50.
I
explained my predicament to Steve and told him to push ahead without me. Next
was the White Trail which started as a climb, easy on my IT band. The middle
section was rougher, reminding me of running at House Mtn, near Knoxville. I
had to walk two steep downhills to cross the Yellow Trail, then there was a
long winding section to Aid #3 at the North Trailhead again which I reached in
~ 4 hours. I could see Steven’s group leaving just as I arrived.
At
Aid 3 I was still on a good pace and feeling strong and aggressive, but with
the IT pain I couldn’t run a step downhill. Luckily, the Red Trail started uphill,
and I was able to pass four guys, including Steve, all walking. By then we were
all hurting, and I apologized, telling them all they would soon pass me on the
downhill. Three of us ended up doing the Green Trail to Aid #4 (Peavine again,
at 5:20) together. At that point, I thought a PR (<6:22) was still in reach.
But
the next section started steeply downhill and in addition to my woes, Steve’s
quads and hamstrings were sore. It remained downhill to the finish and neither
of us was in any condition to run. Luckily, we were caught by only one more
pair of runners. We were on the Red Trail, which was some gravel road and some
single track apparently built for mountain bikes. With the contour trail it was
easy to see ahead and back, and we were happy to spot the finish which we
reached in 6:45, tied for 22 out of 42 finishers.
The
IT band flare up was my big takeaway from this race. I hadn’t done enough pre-race
long running to prepare myself for the 50K, but why did I have problems so
early on? I had done plenty of runs over 12 miles long with no hint that the IT
was going to flare up. This “premature” IT band flare up would continue to
haunt me while racing for the next several years, and for this race had turned
a fun run into a bit of an ordeal.
Though
larger than the organizers expected for a first time race, the 2000 version of
Oak Mountain still had 42 finishers out of 47 starters. At the time Steven and
I didn’t know any of the other runners, but looking back at the results several
names jump out. The legendary DeWayne Satterfield was the overall winner. I
would get to know both DeWayne and Rob Youngren, the third place finisher,
through Barkley and was lucky enough to race the 2017 and 2018 versions of that
race with DeWayne. The women’s winner was Susan Donnelly of Oak Ridge who would
later be an important part of our Haw Ridge running group.
