ST. LOUIS – After a rainout last week, the 2016 Marmot Trail Run Series restarts this week at Castlewood State Park for what “officially” goes down as the third course of the month.
As we expect many of the low-lying areas to still have a lot of standing water following rain on Monday and Tuesday, we’ll start off on Kiefer Creek Road to the Midway/Office Connector across the street from the Ranger Station.
We’ll tackle more than 200 feet of climbing in the four-tenths-of-a-mile climb to the end of the connector and meet up with our drink station and Clif Bar Nutrition Station.
If we went straight across the Grotpeter Trail, we’d end up on the Roller Coaster. We’ll hit this path again, but for now, we’ll turn right on Grotpeter for just under a half of a mile, past the intersection with Fern Glen until we hit the other end of the Rollercoaster.
We make a left turn onto the rolling single track for the next 1.25 miles and suddenly, we’re back at the same intersection we just left – and a return visit to the Clif Bar and drink station. This time we’ll head the opposite direction – West – and follow Grotpeter for a bit until one of the less used connector paths takes us to the left to meet up with the Mountain Ridge Connector and about a mile back down to the valley.
We’ll follow Kiefer Creek Road all the way back to the finish line at race HQ and an after-race meal with drinks provided by Schlafly.
Pray for sun!
