Thursday, March 8, 2012

2nd Annual March Madness Run Coming on March 18

One week from Sunday, runners will gather in the driveway of a blue house on the west-side of Fort Collins to run the full circumnavigation of Horsetooth Reservoir via various routes on roads and trails and return hours later for food and drink and tales of the run.  This run is free and all are welcome.

There are three established routes to choose from with distances of 9, 23 and 34 miles.  There are three start times to choose from as well: 7:00 am, 8:00 am and 9:00 am with the goal of returning sometime between 12:00 and 2:00 for food and festivities.

The classic route is 23 miles with a little over 2000 feet of climbing.  You can find some general March Madness info and the course map for the 23 mile route here.  There is a turn by turn course description here.  And here is the GPS data of my run of this course last year.

If you are looking for more miles (34+) and lots more climbing (6500'), Pete's route is about as challenging as as you can get around here and there is a course map and turn by turn directions here.  Further down on that same post, is the course map and directions for a 9-mile route which doesn't make the full reservoir loop, but does have a couple good climbs, runs alongside the reservoir for awhile and starts and finishes with the same miles as the longer routes.

There are pictures, finish times and stories of last year's event here.

Post a comment or send me an email if you have questions.  RSVP is not necessary, just show up for a start time and bring something to BBQ and some food or drink to share.  The courses will be only minimally marked, so print the map and description for the route you plan to run.  There are places to fill water on the circumnav. routes, but there will be no aid stations, so plan to carry whatever you will need.

See you next Sunday.  Happy Spring!

2 comments:

  1. Yay! I get to run it this year! I think I'll go for the full circumnav...it's gonna be awesome!

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  2. Should be fun. Don't forget my request for perfect weather.

    Last year Ross and I did our first 30 mile runs ever at March Madness, not necessarily planning to but you never know what can happen with the FCTRs. This year I hope to be worrying about what time to get back in order to see the Rams playing in that other March Madness thing.

    Ean, I'm excited you're able to run that day!

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