![]() ![]() The first 33 miles of the course is all new. But the Superior Hiking Trail has now been built around the other side of that property, so we’ve eliminated that road section. What is this reference to the new course section? The old course was not allowed to pass over private property, so we had to use 7 miles along Highway 61. Since we finish at the Grand Marais High School, will we be able to take showers there? Yes. Also, you can park at the finish (Grand Marais, also on Highway 61), and a van will pick you up in the morning and bring you to the start.Ĭan I turn in a bag with my drop bags that will be placed at the finish? Yes. There are 2 vans that will run when there are enough runners. Since I paid $5 for the shuttle, is the shuttle from the start to the finish or vice versa and what is the schedule? If you park at the start, the shuttle will bring you from the finish to the start. But a restaurant in Beaver Bay will serve spaghetti that night. Is there a pre-race pasta dinner included in our fee? No. I wasn’t sure of all the arrangements, so I finally broke down and called the RD to ask the following questions her answers follow: In addition, the cutoff was raised to 36 hours. I then got a separate mailing with the same list of aid stations but with a reference to a “new course section” (whatever that was). There were pages of some maps and sketches, but these seemed to be for the benefit of the crews. Basically, it had the aid stations and the mileages. It came, but there wasn’t a lot of information. I was looking forward to returning from vacation to read the more detailed race information I was expecting in the mail from the RD. I knew it was basically single-track trail with one 7-mile road section along busy Highway 61, which runs next to Lake Superior. The web site didn’t have an elevation profile or even a complete course description. It had a 34-hour cutoff, thus indicating a tough run. According to one race report, it has a lot of short, steep climbs. ![]() The run is a point-to-point with 14,000’ of climb. I wished I could have done more long runs, but that wasn’t possible. ![]() I took it fairly easy (3.5 hours) as I didn’t want to risk an injury. I ran from Elizabeth Furnace over Shawl Gap down to 613 then back up and down Sherman’s trail to Elizabeth Furnace. When I returned Labor Day weekend, I bolted out to Massanutten on Monday for a tune-up run. Not the optimal training for a difficult, hilly 100. I went on vacation in August, managing a 20-mile run on the rolling roads in the Pennsylvania Dutch country and a 5-hour run on a flat canal towpath in New Jersey. As it turned out, Catoctin was my last big training run, which was 4 weeks out from the race. ![]() So I signed up, paying the late fee as usual. Since I had lived in Minnesota before and had run Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth in the summer of 1999, this race seemed to be a good one to do. Since I had a free weekend, I checked the trail calendar and discovered the ST100. I was supposed to be on Reserve duty the weekend of the race, but that duty got canceled around the time of Catoctin due to lack of funds. Why ST100? I had run Catherine’s and Catoctin this summer with no plans for anything else. I am going to fill in a lot of the gaps in the hopes that more people will run this race. The web site for the race didn’t have a lot of information on it, either. I did not know anybody who ran this race before doing it. This report is going to be somewhat different from my earlier reports because (hopefully) this one will have useful information in it. What I remember most about it are the roots. It was sort of strange running a trail race through the area where I had once lived (even though I, being such a wee lad back then, have no memory of the place). Although you can’t see the base itself, you do run past Airbase Road just after leaving the aid station. The first aid station for the Superior Trail 100 is in Finland. The airbase was closed in the early 1980s, and empty buildings now occupy the site. Fighter aircraft were stationed at Duluth, about 70 miles south to intercept any detected bombers. My dad worked at a radar site whose mission was to detect bombers coming from Russia. My roots include Finland, MN where we lived in 1954-55. Roots and Roots: A Superior Trail Run, by John Dodds Roots and Roots: A Superior Trail RunĪs an Air Force brat, I lived in a lot of places. ![]()
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