The Wildcat Ridge Romp is a multi distance (10 mile, 20 mile, 50k, 50 mile, 100 k) event organized and managed by the NJ Trail Series group. It takes place at the Wildcat Ridge Wildlife Management Area in northern New Jersey typically in mid August when it is nice and warm; I’ll elaborate on the heat for the event this year a little later. All distances for the event are run by repeating a 10 mile loop as many times as necessary to finish a runner’s chosen distance. The course is primarily single track trail with a few short sections of ATV trail, paved road, and fire road mixed in. The trail is pretty technical in my opinion with some semi treacherous rocky sections and enough elevation change to keep it interesting even if it was completely smooth runnable trail. My Garmin data showed a little under 1000’ of elevation gain per loop with 4702’ at the end of the 50 miler. The one creek crossing at around the six mile mark of the loop offered a solid bridge so wet feet due to creek crossings were not an issue. Unfortunately, due to other reasons wet feet would not be avoided altogether.

Following finishing my first 50 miler (North Face Endurance Challenge at Bear Mountain, NY) recovery went well and faster than expected so I returned to my normal non-training routine of running. It was mid May and I was feeling confident and motivated, but had no other races lined up for the remainder of the year. The North Face 50 miler was intended to be the running pinnacle of the year for me in 2016, but returning to running afterwards left me looking for a new challenge. Since my first attempt at a 50 miler went better than expected, I thought attempting another and improving my time at the same distance would be an achievable goal to work towards. I especially thought it was a doable goal because I wasn’t aiming for a massive improvement. My finishing time at the North Face 50 miler was 9:04:29. I was hoping to improve my 50 miler time to under 9 hours. My thinking was that if I could find a similar 50 miler, shaving five minutes off of my time wouldn’t be that much more incredibly difficult. If I hadn’t had to stop to clear my colon at the NF 50 miler, I would have already been under 9 hours. In my mind, I was literally one poo away from my goal.

Read my full race report at: https://scottcsnell.blogspot.com/2017/01/2016-wildcat-ridge-romp.html