FLINTSTONE, MD., OCT. 28, 2012 — There is no official, event-created elevation profile for the 3rd annual Fire on the Mountain 50K and 2-person relay (presented by Sheetz).
The course is broken down into 4 sections: red trail, green trail, logging roads and purple trail. Green Ridge State Forest is owned by the state of Maryland and managed by the state Department of Natural Resources. DNR has created maps with general elevation profiles of each trail section. I’ve taken photos of them and posted them here. So far, there is no elevation profile for the logging roads section.
First of all, here is a link to the course map. Click on the images (below) for larger versions.
The first 1.2 miles are a mix of forest service road and hardcap. Keep in mind 50K runners don’t traverse the entire distance of the red trail / Long Pond Trail (almost, but not quite, all of it). Then comes about 7.7 miles on the red trail (going through aid stations 1 and 2).
After that, runners have about 7 miles on the green trail (going through Aid Station 3 and up to Aid Station 4, which is the oasis/relay exchange zone).
After Aid Station 4/Oasis, runners enjoy a faster pace (usually) on the forest service roads of Green Ridge Road and Jacobs Road (passing through Aid Station 5).
Then runners turn left onto the purple / Mountain Bike Trail, off Jacobs Road about 1/10th of a mile north of May Road. Runners go through Aid Station 6 and remain on the purple trail until circling around to the Mountain Bike Trailhead.
Don’t forget! All runners must come from the correct direction, enter the trailhead area (where everyone parked to board the bus) and circle the perimeter of the field before crossing the finish line. At the entrance of the grassy field/trailhead, runners are handed a small log they should carry with them until crossing the finish line. Only when the runner throws the log into the fire, at the finish line, does the official clock stop for each runner.
October 22, 2012
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