Heat and Humidity at the 2008 PL 50K              

By David Horton 

 Of the four ultras held in our area, the PL is the most scenic one of the bunch.   With spring in the low areas, and winter still in the high areas, a GREAT waterfall, a beautiful grassy road/trail for many miles, it has become the favorite ultra of many runners in the east.    We have a great start/finish area where most of the runners camp before the race.    We have a pizza feed on Friday night and a big cookout on Saturday after the race. This year’s race was the third race in the Beast Series and the second race in the Lynchburg Ultra Series.   Because of this and the event, we attracted 263 starters and had 256 finishers.  

We had a deluge of rain on Friday night, a definite tent testing night, and a deluge on Saturday, near the 10 hour cutoff.   In between there was a lot of heat that many of the runners had difficulty with in an early season event where runners were not adjusted.   The men’s race was won by Sean Andrish ( Leesburg, VA ).   Sean was smarting from a fourth place finish in the nearby Terrapin Mountain Marathon just 4 weeks earlier.    Andrew Ponder ( Richmond, VA ) winner of the Terrapin race, was a distant second.    Justine Morrison and Amy Sproston ( Washington, D.C.), were the class of the ladies field with Justine easily winning.

Of note, there were over 20 Liberty University students running the race with over half of them being female.   I think that speaks highly of the future of ultra running for women in the future.  One problem that we may have in the future is the fact that the owner of the Promise Land Youth Camp ( Temple Baptist Church ) may be selling the camp.  I don’t know what we will do if that happens.

 The 2009 Promise Land 50K is scheduled for April 25. This is a shorter story than I normally write for a race report.   Please read Keith Kniplings race story, I can’t describe the event as well as he has so please read his commentary, it is very good. 

Iin Christ, David Horton