Laurel Valley Preview

Never say never. After my suffer fest at Laurel Valley last year I uttered those infamous post race lines of "I will never do that again". Ha! How many of us have done that before? After my blisters healed and I recovered, I realized how much I enjoyed the trails and the overall low-key nature of the event. The RD has done a lot to promote running throughout the Carolina's for a long time and puts on great events. So here I sit, a mere 90 minutes from heading down towards Greenville, SC for the Laurel Valley Whitewater Run.

I am traveling down there with running buds John and Mo and we will meet up with several other folks for a pre-race meal. Byron Backer is letting us all crash on his floor tonight and tomorrow we are up early to drop cars and then start promptly at 6:00 AM. The good news is the temperatures look to be much lower than last year with highs expected in the upper-80s. Much better than the triple digits we endured last year. Even the humidity looks to be relatively mundane between 50% and 60%. I feel pretty fit but will not treat this as a race but rather a leisurely training run. Definitely part of the race plan this year is several cool dips in mountain streams. I neglected to do this last year and paid the price.

I will post a full race report early next week. By the way, Karl continues to make progress south on the AT. he is off to a great start on his quest to traverse the trail in 47 days. You can follow along here.