It was great to see so many of you at the FLRC picnic last night, and a lot of the chatter revolved around the FLRC Challenge. Alas, we forgot to get pictures of the awards for Jesse Canfield and Pete Kresock for finishing the FLRC 100K Ultra Challenge—who will complete it next?
Jamie Loehr, the first person to complete the Challenge, and I were geeking out at the picnic, trying to figure out who has completed all 10 courses the most times. The answer: Pete Kresock, with four passes through all the courses. Gabrielle Woo is next, with three passes across all the courses. Impressive running, and way to stay healthy!
Congratulations to our most recent Challenge finisher—William Hartnett completed a steamy Pseudo Skunk Cabbage earlier this week to finish all 10 courses during his summer in Ithaca. Plus, a big leaderboard welcome to Aaron Hicks, our most recent signup, who notched his first course at the Cornell Botanic Gardens.
As Aaron shows, there’s plenty of time left to sign up and complete the Challenge before the end of the year. I plan to leave as many courses as possible open until December 31st, weather permitting. Maybe we’ll have a nighttime New Year’s Eve group run on one of the courses to ring out 2021. What Challenge will 2022 bring?
Thanks to Amy Dawson for a wonderful blog post describing the Challenge, how she got into it, what she loves about it, and how it has helped her to enjoy trail running more. That’s been a common refrain—lots of people who were previously intimidated about trails or worried about getting lost have been using the Challenge (with either our RunGo directions or a new running partner) as an excuse to explore some of FLRC’s favorite trails.
Remember that the Tortoise & Hare course is closed for a couple of weeks until the storm-related damage can be repaired. The closed part is at the top, so I strongly recommend waiting to run it again until we get the all-clear from the park—it would be a bummer to run up that hill without being able to complete the course. Too bad, since Tortoise just recently clicked past 1000 miles total, making it our seventh course to exceed that mark.
Finally, keep the photos coming into our shared FLRC Challenge album! This week’s photo is from Nichole Cappadora, logging some miles on the East Hill Rec Way course with her daughters Charlotte and Samantha, who are participating in the FLRC Kids Challenge.
