West Virginia Mountain Trail Runners

The 2nd annual BBL 12 Hr was a lot more fun than I thought it might be. On first wash the notion of running 6.4 miles of single track, then sitting around as your team members took their much anticipated turn, seemed like it might be a recipe for a long day. But that was not the case at all! In between cheering in your own teammates and other participants, there was time for mtbiking, swimming, socializing, eating, or even taking a nap.

Team Mons Cursor

Many runners arrived to the mountaintop camping area next to the start/finish on Friday evening. It was a restful, starry night in Preston County. At 5:30am everyone else rolled in for the 7:00 start. Runner classes were solo, 2 and 4 person teams, and greater than 4 person “fun teams”. Five member team Mons Cursor was all about fun, but running 12 laps in as many hours certainly placed us on the competitive side too. More…Race Director Heather Parks was very organized with charts, spreadsheets, ribbon batons and clocks to keep track of solo and team laps. I am anxious to see the official results but I believe there were around 15 solo and probably 30 team runners. As the day wore on lap times tended to creep upward a couple of minutes, at least they did for this runner(maybe it was that late afternoon pizza). After 7pm awards it was to the lake and the showers. Then campfires and more partying for those lucky ones able to stay another evening. Don Parks finished the evening with an 11pm fireworks display.I think next year this event will pull in more teams and solo runners. Definitely a large part of the draw for many of us is the time spent together with friends for a weekend.

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