Buck Fifty Runners,
Good evening! I know you are in full swing with your Buck Fifty training for April 17th, and one of the main areas you probably focus on is what does the course look like.
I would say we are pretty overkill on course marking. If you get lost, you really didn’t do any research on the legs you’re scheduled to run. Here is how we go about the task of marking 150 miles.
We mark the course with signs every half mile, and there are painted arrows on the road every half mile in between. Essentially, you will see a marker every ¼ mile.
For trail runs, we use signs at every turn and bright-colored plastic tube stakes in the ground about every 10th of a mile. These tubes have a reflective tip so you can see them at night.
We have written turn by turn direction and maps on our website, which you can download now. Legs 2-4 have the maps correct, but we are working on the written direction part and a graphics refresh.
Each Leg is on the AllTrails App. If you download that to your toolkit for the race, you can really zoom in and see lots of details for each leg of the race. Here is a link to a pdf with all 30 Legs of the race on AllTrails.
The final piece, and this is more for our benefit (Buck Fifty Headquarters), but each team carries a tracker with them during the race. This gets passed off at each checkpoint. It sends a single out every minute, so we know where you are during the race. There will be a website you can follow along during the race to see where each team is. If you have your phone with you can follow exactly where you are on the course while you run. We follow this site during the race, and have volunteers to track down people who get off course.
These trackers also have a panic button that, when held down for 3 seconds, will send me your coordinates. You are welcome to use this if you find yourself in an emergency.
Oh yeah, and if you go to our YouTube Channel, you can watch a video for most of the Legs of the race. We don’t have them all on there, but I think about two-thirds of them are, and we plan to add more before race day this year.
The main thing is to study the maps for your Legs of the race. Don’t just plan to follow the person in front of you, because in some cases, there might not be anyone in front of you, or the person might be wrong. I have definitely seen that happen. That's called the blind leading the blind.
I hope that helps, and please let me know if you need anything at anytime! Have a great evening!
Dave Huggins
Race Director