I learned about the Lake Ouachita Vista Trail (LOViT) Marathon a year ago when a group of us went to Sunmart and my friends Randy Ellis and Rob Phillip instead went over into Arkansas to do this low-key trail run. The Arkansas folks put on several great trail runs that are no frills, no t-shirt, no medal, no entry fee, no whining events. The cool thing is that they are always fun events, great courses, good aid stations, and the price is right....just a couple bucks in a donation bucket is all that is asked.I had got on google and found a motel that seemed close to where the race start was. Google is great, and I was even luckier than I thought as the lodging was only 1 mile away from the race.
However, the above picture WAS NOT the motel. It was an old concrete block building, which would have been great in the event of a tornado. The windows and doors were drafty, and did I mention it got down to 17 degrees during the night? When we arrived, only 15 minutes before 9:00, our rooms were ice box cold. No need to turn the heat on if no bodies are inside, right? The old wall heating unit ran for an hour before it was warm enough to undress for bed. BRRR!It was a not-so-restful night. Not sure why, as I was not at all nervous about the race. We turned out the lights around 10:30 and at 12:30ish, I stumbled across the room to turn the heat DOWN. The heater was slow to heat but was doing a better job. Then, I kicked off all the covers (I was wearing PJs) and snuggled my head as close to the icy single paned window as possible to try to keep my body temp cool enough to go to sleep.
Someone's I-Phone started blaring at 6:30, and that along with the noise of several winter bass fisherman right outside my single pane window, woke me up....no chance of dozing back off.
Jason and Lisa, who I shared the room with, were getting ready going through the ritual of applying tape, body glide, butt paste, tights, Icebreaker apparel, and such. Notice the nice ambiance of the room.
We had adjoining rooms with Susan, Caroline, and Kathy, and their room was no nicer than ours.
Our whole group before the start.
Chewing on your glasses....a nervous habit?
Without a lot of fanfare, the race was off. A marathon on trails. Oh there was a bit of road to start....maybe a quarter mile, and then all the sweet single track you could ever want.
And several great view of the lake....hence the reason for the name of the trail I would think....
A lot of the trails were covered with leaves. These leaves hid a few rocks and roots. I was able to readily find these hidden roots and on a number of occasions did my best to dislodge them. However, the score was 79-0 in favor of the roots. A couple of these encounters sent me sprawling to the ground. More on the second crash and burn later.
Caroline and Susan motor up a pine needle cushioned trail.
Lisa running strong early on.
Jason and Kathy took off like a shot, and other than seeing them after the turn-around, I did not see them until the finish.
I'll probably go a little overboard posting pix of the trails, but these trail were that good!
Throughout the day, we saw nice park benches installed at various places deep in the woods along the trails. I marveled at the trouble someone went to to put these benches in. Someone hiked materials miles and miles on the trails to set these benches, and there were at least 20 of them.
Lots of wooden bridges too. Notice the whitish rocks lining the trail. These rock, I am guessing, were some kind of quartz. Some were impressive enough I gave thought to taking a souvenir, bit my tights had very small pockets. Not a good idea.
Friendly aid station volunteers....gotta LOViT!
Onward, up one short climb and down another.
Not all of the race was on single track. There were a couple of short sections with gravel roads.
About a mile before the turn-around, we came to a very significant hill. I think the website called this a 450 foot climb. I think it was considerably more than that. There were several switchbacks in the climb, and this section was also some of the rockiest trails we encountered. Still fun though.
Caroline takes a breather on the way up.
Susan bombs the downhill on her return trip.
A cool tree....would work well as a goal post.
Another short section of jeep road. These sections were quite runnable, and it makes me think I could run a PR here if I showed up rested.
Another bridge, another bench.
Last major climb of the race. 25.5 miles, and less than a mile to go.In these smaller races, basically when people finish, they might stay and chat for a bit, and then they go home. That's a given. Slower people like me don't have a whole lot of crowd support when trotting across the finish line, but Kathy and Jason were there to cheer us on. Also, Phillip Carr, the race director was there to congratulate us and record our finishing time.
I think they put on a great race. having such a nice bunch of trails to run on makes the job easier. The course was well marked--the LOViT is marked with white blazes, and the major truns were marked with yellow ribbon and arrows. We did miss a turn at one point but it was due to chatting and not paying attention. This is definitely a race I'd do again.
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