Race organized by Blaze Trails Running
Location: Bridgeport, TX
Distances held: 10K / 18k / Marathon / 54K
The location of the race is about 60 miles from DFW. The location of the race is at an Adventure Park where people hike, ride bikes, and drive Jeeps (off road type vehicles) on trails. I’m not sure if there was camping or not but the race didn’t start until 7:30a so it was easy to drive up in the morning.
The course was an 18K loop so the 54K runners ran it 3 times, Marathoners ran it twice with a correction loop, while the 18K runners got to enjoy the entire loop. The loop was broken in to sections: Easy and More Difficult. The first section or about 7 miles was a runnable single track trail that was at the bottom of the hill while the second portion or about 4 miles was a more technical/hill climb up and down the “hill” before ending with a steep climb up some rocks to finish off the loop. As for the marathon race they added a correction loop to get the miles and the corrections loop was to run the more difficult/technical section of the loop. The elevation gain for the marathon was roughly 1700 feet and most of that was over about 11-13 miles of the marathon race.
This race had some serious instructions before the race to ensure everyone understood the trail system and once on the course the signage, volunteers, and initial directions given made total sense while on the coarse which made it easy to navigate.
Aid Stations where located about 3.5 miles from the start and you went by this station twice per loop, a water station was on the hill as well and then you had the main station at the start/finish are of each loop. The stations were well attended with volunteers, the stations had:
-Fruit (Bananas and Oranges)
-BB&J sandwiches
-Chips
-Cookies and Candies
-Water / Tailwind / Soda
-Salt Pills
-Cool finisher’s medal as well as a well-designed shirt
Overall this was well attended for it being the inaugural race and I would assume this race will get bigger each year due to the course and location. It is challenging but not too difficult.
