Susan Donnelly

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Though I’ve never aspired to, I’m finally directing a race.  A good one.  And most importantly, a new one.  The Cumberland Trail 50k.

It’s a lot of work.  I’ve sympathized with race directors over the years but never truly felt their pain until I started walking in their mocassins.  Case in point: I’m working what amounts to two jobs right now at my place of paid employment; I’m teaching a one-day, non-credit class for the University of Tennessee this fall on (what else?) ultramarathons;  I’m the steward for the North Ridge Trail here in town; I’m a member of the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals; I’m slowly remodeling my house; I’m trying to maintain my ultra racing schedule; I have family and friends that I want to spend time with.  And I want to spend as much time as I can at my passion – inspiring others.

So where does race directing fit in?  And why, I ask myself at least a handful of times a day, am I doing this?

The Danger of A Good Idea

When I agreed to participate on the Knoxville Track Club’s newly-formed Trail Committee a year or two ago, I saw it as a good way to encourage trail running but mostly trail ultras.  That is, after all, what I love about my sport, and there are essentially no accessible ultras in this trail-rich area. Crazy.

Kerry Trammell proposed a 50k, I seconded it, and the committee members were amenable, so Rob and I spent all our off weekends for the next year scouting locations, scouring maps, imagining courses, and trying to put something really good together.  We’d find fantastic bits of trail out in the middle of nowhere that couldn’t be strung into a coherent course, or a so-so assemblage of trail miles with horrible logistics, or places with great logistics and less-than-scenic trails that were less than exciting.  It was discouraging but I definitely didn’t want to shoe-horn a course together just to say we had one.  There are enough great trails around there that something had to work, and work well.

The pieces finally began to fit together on the Cumberland Trail out of Cove Lake State Park.  I wasn’t expecting the absolute, ideal, perfect setup but after a lot of refining and the help of some good friends, we came up with a course that actually met all the criteria: an honest challenge, as wild and remote as possible, finish-able within the time constraints, family-friendly start/finish location, access for enough aid stations, and expandable in the future to longer distances (Rob, though not the RD, already has the 100k and 100-mile courses mapped in his head).

The next thing I know, the entry form is out there and runners are signing up.

But Why?

As the work load mounted and my motivation wavered, there still wasn’t a good answer to the question. Finally, last week, when work and race schedules tightening unbearably and deadlines peaked, Rob gave me the answer…”for the mountains.”

I didn’t get it until I remembered telling him the story of riding along in the car our ridgeline road here in town as a child.  I’d always look over at the Cumberlands paralleling us to the north.  All those folds and peaks and hollows…I wanted to explore it all.  But even from our ridge top, you couldn’t ignore the top knots, raw open scars, and malformed contours on every peak, left decades of coal mining and lumbering.  Every time we drove that road, I tried to imagine what the misshapen mountains must have looked like before, and couldn’t. To me at that age, they were in pain and asking for help, so I promised someday I would.

When I grew up, I’d occasionally try to think about how to help but never could find a meaningful way. Eventually, I started to rationalize it away.  The promise seemed impractical, probably misguided, and easily excused as a silly, childish impulse.  After all, the mountains certainly weren’t going to hold me to it, and it was the thought that counted, right?

I’d all but forgotten about that promise until Rob connected it to the race.

The Answer

I firmly believe that trail races should in some way benefit the trails they use.  It’s fair to the trails we run on and a smart investment in our trail running future.  As a trail steward and trail runner, I’ve seen plenty of the good and bad that different uses bring to a trail.  Good maintenance and funding for trails only helps the sport. That’s why the proceeds from this race benefit the Cumberland Trail Conference.

But I’m also hoping the race has a wider benefit by introducing runners to this special trail and by helping more people – runners and non-runners alike – see these mountains as a beautiful place that has more value to us all than what’s been taken from those top knots and scars.

That’s plenty of “Why.”

Posted: Wednesday, August 19, 2009, 10:38 pm | Tags: Blog | Respond | Trackback