@Challengers Our ultrarunners continue to impress, with Dennis Stadelman wasting little time in completing our first Tough Trail Challenge of the year!
In classic Dennis fashion, he also took photos of each course, posted a report, and got ice cream!
Holy Love of Elevation!
I ran the Tough Trail Challenge today (Tuesday) in beautiful sunny conditions. Some of my experiences on the courses are captured in separate course posts. This is just commentary on my overall Trail Challenge.
First, major kudos to @adamengst and all others responsible for this superb selection of scenic trails courses! I think the Ithaca area runners I’ve met really appreciate the quality, quantity, and variety of the trails there, that I continue to “discover” through the FLRC Challenges. Thank you!
I started late morning on Abbott Ascent, then followed a natural, mostly northern progression to North Country Half, Mulholland Falls, Fall Creek Trails, and Cayuga Cliffs. This has the advantage of knocking off the two longest and most difficult courses first, then allowing me to relax a little more on the remaining courses if I thought I had plenty of time. This strategy worked well, as I really took my time at Cayuga Cliffs knowing I had it under 12 hours. I think my total elapsed time was about 11h20m. This should provide encouragement to you all, as I think I had the slowest elapsed time for last year’s Tough Trail Challenge.
I don’t know the elevation numbers on the shirts, but my Garmin tallied over 5600 feet for the Trail Challenge.
Lastly, no Challenge Completion shall go unrewarded:
Hey, nice job Dennis! Good to see you back at it down our way. I honestly think this year’s set of trail courses is the hardest yet in the Challenge’s 5 years. And I appreciate the nice descriptive recap as always!
Thanks! Love these trail courses and hope to run them several times! I usually save the tarmac courses for the Ultra Challenge but I’m trying to get in some early season elevation gain and the two new ones this year seem to have that.
Our second completion didn’t take long. Congrats to Pete Kresock for redoing the Tough Trail Challenge he attempted on the first day. With a Sweet 1600 for good measure!
He’s going for the 100K! Started course #10 Triple Hump at 11:54pm with 5.5 hours to go 
Indeed! I was fooled since the leaderboard recorded the Tough Trail Challenge completion temporarily, but then swapped it for a full 100K Ultra Challenge completion once the remaining courses came in.
