Fast Running Blog

Has anyone seen a map of the course for this year? The last few days I've been using the Course Tool to add the routes of some of the upcoming races and training routes I'll be doing, and it would be nice to get Provo River 1/2 in there as well. It's been a couple of years since I've run it and it seems like the last mile or 2 are always different each year.

So anyway if anyone has a map or rough idea about the course I would be happy to enter it in with the Course Tool.

The course this year is totally different from the past.  It doesn't start up the canyon road of Vivian Park, but will start more towards the dam.  If I get time I will try to produce a map to show you the start and finish.  Or you could look at the certification but it will take a bit before it is available online.  Mile markers are painted on the trail, but there is a turn around section that can goof you up if you don't know where it is.

Bill, Does that mean it is a slower course this year? I don't know the area well enough to picture were the new start is.

I talked to Curt on July 4th about it. They are closing down a lane on highway 40 for the first 3 miles of the race, now that there are 2 lanes in each direction all the way up to the dam.

I just drove down it last night. If it actually starts at the dam itself, then it is a pretty good downhill that will be equivalent to the side road that the course has used in years past. Remember that the road at the dam is X feet above the river itself (not sure how high). The road levels out right before the tunnel, and then you jump on the paved trail at mile 3 (Vivian Park) and follow that same route down all the way to the end. The route is going to be exactly the same from mile 3 on, including the up-and-back section at Bridal Veil Falls.

Someone should drive up the canyon and start their odometer at Vivian Park. Tell us where the 3 mile mark is, and if it is actually up all the way to the dam. I don't think it is, so I would be interested to know where the starting point is.

On a positive note: bus transportation will be much quicker to the start.

I'm doing the paperwork for the course and about 2 weeks ago Curt told me he was going to change a few things, and then he would send me a revised map. I'm not sure what changes are being made but I will let you guys know once I do.

Bill, Breanna, or anyone else -- have you heard anything more about the new course? Has Curt finalized things and come up with a revised map?

Hope they get the fires taken care of here pretty soon. That could throw a pretty big wrench into race plans.

Thanks everyone for all the info.

I'm sure most everyone running the race got this same email today that I  just received describing the course changes due to the fire situation. But I thought I'd post it here anyway. Curt doesn't mention anything about the zig-zag uphill mile at Bridal Veil so perhaps we get a break this year? If anyone else has additional information not contained in the info below please share.

Provo 1/2 Marathon 2008
Course Update and Bib Pickup info. for Friday, Aug. 8th (4pm until Dark)
or Sat. Aug. 9th, 4:45am. You must bring ID/proof or registration. Bring your print-out from www.raceutah.com or the email confirmation with your Bib #  to pick up your bib#. If you are having someone pick up your bib#, they must have your print-out.

We are sending this notice out, to say that we are running from South Fork to Provo canyon - down the road 4 miles, then on highway 2.5 miles, then on the trail to Shops @ riverwoods, with a loop to finish. This is a change due to the fire, we are not starting at Deer creek dam.

You "cannot"  run with out your bib # so you must pick up your bib# on Friday, 4pm -till Dark,at Shops@Riverwoods, You can avoid long lines Sat. morning or 2nd choice, Sat. morning 4:45am get bib and on the bus fast. Friday afternoon is best.

Sat. if you have Bib # from Friday you can get on the bus as fast as possible.
Meet at shops @ Riverwoods 4:45am to get the bus, only.
Do not drive up south fork. 
Due to the past fire at bridal veil, which is almost out.
You are not starting at Deer creek dam! Don't drive there!
 
We changed our start of run, This is a fun course. It is Beautiful, we like it a lot, thanks

See you Friday 4:-Dark, if you can to get your bib, so you don't have to wait in line Saturday morning at 4:45am.
We have drop bags on friday, if you like, get a honey gel packet if you come Friday 4:-till dark.
You may wish to bring your own drop bags, to leave at the start top of south fork, marked as you like, since ours are all the same white and hard to find at the end.

see www.trailrun.com

Thanks for posting that Tom.  I didn't receive one so I assume some other registered runners didn't either.

Tom, Thank you. I didn't receive the e-mail either. Are you going to try and piece together a course tool version of the race? If not, I may.  Nothing exact but I want to get a sense of how fast to go out versus how much I have to hang on to survive at the end...

Adam I started trying to piece together a quick approximation or the course but I'm having trouble getting elevation readings and I keep getting loads of error messages.

Also I'm not quite sure where to put the start line. The start line from last year is roughly 3.3 miles from Vivian but in Curt's email he says it's 4 miles which would put the start just below Trefoil. Looking with google it does look like you could start 4 miles up and there is a place for buses to loop around so that could be the plan. I think that would also put us up a little higher and give us a bit more elevation drop overall.

And I'm thinking we get to avoid the backtrack uphill mile at Bridal Veil so that will be nice. However Paul Thomas was telling me that by running on the highway rather than the river trail between Vivian and Nunns you get a nice little hill that you don't get with the trail, followed by a nasty 7% descent. So anyway if you can figure a way to get the course tool to work and get an approximation I think it would be quite useful to give an idea how all these changes might effect the pacing of the course.

I got to experience that little hill, it is noticeable I won't lie. Not knowing the area anything I could be piece together beyond what you just told me would probably be a waste of everyone's (including my own) time. Thanks for the info so far and I'll look for you at the start.

Adam, it sounds like the course will follow your exact run on saturday (the last 10 miles at least). So you may actually know the course better than you think.

4 miles downhill on the road to vivian park, then hop onto the highway for 2.5, get back on the trail, but then instead of stopping at the parking lot you continue your run to riverwoods (1 mile more, fairly straight, gradual downhill). Riverwoods would put you at roughly 11-11.5 miles depending on how they do it. Then an extra 1.5-2 mile loop at the end.

You are basically going to run 13.1 down. Elevation at the start I think is around 5800-5900 ft.

I reviewed the last couple miles of the course with Curt and Sasha this morning.  Based on what Curt was saying, it sounds like the race starts at a field up South Fork Canyon, which is where the buses will turn around.  The first mile is really steep heading down the canyon, followed by a more gradual downhill, which is still pretty steep.  We will get off of the highway just past Bridal Veil Falls at the park entrance there and hop onto the river trail.  You turn off the river trail before you get to the shops at the Riverwoods.  This is at 5200 N, just under 11 miles into the race.  You follow some roads around as well as another river trail before finishing on the river trail just west of the Riverwoods, right next to the bib# pick up.  There will also be aid stations at miles 4 and 7.  The last couple of miles might be kind of confusing, so hopefully they have it marked out well, because there are a lot of twists and turns that might confuse people.

Hope ya'll are excited for the race tomorrow!  Adam RW's course tool shows its going to be a 56 mile race!

You know what I'm about to give up. I've tried three times and each time it does something funky. First two times there was no elevation at 13.2 and 13.1 miles in length. Then I got some elevation information and the race jumped to the 56 miles!!! Very strange. That and the start and finish plus most in between I think is completely off from what Adam and Jeff just posted. If one of you two could have a stab at it that would be great!

56 mile race?  Adam, maybe coming to the 16 mile trail race will help you more than a 56 mile race...  you should reconsider.

Last time he ran it this way I got totally lost and so did alot of other people.  So yes I hope it is clearly marked, because it wasn't last time.

Adam I've tried multiple times to put the course in but I'm having similar problems as you. Extra miles tacked onto the end and the elevations are always either 0 or crazy numbers. So I pretty much gave up on that idea.

I also started recording elevations at each quarter mile with Google Earth but didn't get very far into that as things got busy at work. If I get some free time later this afternoon I'll see if I can finish that up at least through mile 11 and post the data later.

Are we totally OCD or what? We're probably better off just not thinking much about the race or course, leave the watch at home, take of running and have fun.

I'm totally OCD. No doubting that. I like to think about this stuff to distract me about the race. Whenever I stall for something I try and do something related but not completely necessary. Something is finally working for me. I have a "pretty close" course and it has some elevation info. However, I'm confused by the splits. See below. The mile with a -3.6% elevation has one of the slowest miles (5:58)?! But the one with a grade very similar has a CRAZY fast mile (5:09)...

Distance (miles)   Elevation   Avg. Grade from Last (%)    Split Time    Total Time
0    5971    N/A    N/A    0:00
1    5876    -1.80    6:10    6:10
2    5687    -3.59    5:58    12:09
3    5656    -0.59    5:50    18:00
4    5293    -6.87    5:43    23:43
5    5286    -0.12    5:47    29:31
6    5194    -1.75    5:18    34:49
7    5067    -2.41    5:11    40:01
8    5091    0.46    5:38    45:40
9    4911    -3.41    5:11    50:51
10    4893    -0.34    5:49    56:41
11    4780    -2.15    5:09    1:01:50
12    4844    1.20    5:35    1:07:26
13    4768    -1.44    5:09    1:12:35
13.0828    4761    -1.65    0:24    1:13:00

Those splits don't look like good targets.  I would just take the average split you want (5:34) and subtract 15 seconds for the first 4 miles (assuming we have four miles in south fork canyon), add 10 seconds for the mile coming out of the canyon  (mile 5 - I am assuming that is the spot on the highway before where I wussed out on the tempo, so it is somewhat uphill), try to hit the average splits mile 6-10, then try to hit 10 seconds over for the rest.  That should be just about right.  The last three miles will be tough because our legs will be tired and the miles are flat and it sounds like we'll have lots of turns in the last two miles.  Should be fun!

Dang Adam your numbers look nothing like the quarter mile elevations I get from google earth. I'll post mine for comparison, but I imagine nothing beats just running by feel and using a little common sense. Actually my real reason for posting these is just to show Adam I'm more OCD than he is.

Mile     0      .25     .50     75
0     5834   5774   5713   5671
(net drop -212 from start to mile 1)
1     5622   5630   5584   5522
(-123)
2     5499   5468   5434   5420
(-97)
3     5402   5373   5295   5234
(-205)
4     5197   5193   5191   5193
(-8)
5     5189   5194   5250   5200
(-1)
6     5188   5123   5116   5065
(-153)
7     5035   5006   4992   4964
(-93)
8     4942   4921   4917   4908
(-71)
9     4871   4851   4845   4839
(-46)
10   4825   4807   4790   4790
(-45)
11   4780

I don't know the course after this point but I'm assuming it's mostly flat from here on out.

For the benefit of the potentially lost souls who might stray on the "loopy" section, here is the map of the course:

http://fastrunningblog.com/course.php?course_id=271&course_name=Provo+River+Half+2008

I posted some details on the updates I made to the Course Tool in my blog as well:

http://sasha.fastrunningblog.com/blog-A-M-Talked-to-Curt-last-night-and-reali/08-08-2008.html

That sounds about right.

You'll really fly down the first four miles. The next will still be downhill but may be a little bumpy. Once you leave the canyon your momentum should be way up- then the game is trying to hold on to it the gradual down/flat last three miles.

I would do my best to run hard enough effort through the first ten to still have the mind ready to attack the last three miles (which with the turns and such will probably be a time sucker).

Sasha, Thank you for saving Tom and I from falling into a downward spiral of increasingly pointless posts.  :)

Yes Sasha thanks a bunch!

Although I'm still a bit baffled by the disparity in some of the elevation readings between all the maps/data floating around.

Looking forward to a jolly good time!