Just the "Fun Run" at FL50s

“And I feel so much depends on the weather.” - Stone Temple Pilots, “Plush”

July 4th weekend can only mean one thing for Upstate New York trail runners—the Finger Lakes 50s and its notoriously nasty weather. The Finger Lakes Runners Club resurrected this race after a hiatus in the Year of the ‘Rona with Forest Frolic race directors Peter Dady and Mike Stone now at the helm. 

The race’s 16.5-mile loop is quite fast when the trails are dry. Problem is, they’re never dry. Some combination of gooey mud, slick mud, wet leaves, and flooded trails always seems to hinder the whole lot of us at this race, year after year. 

This time I opted in for the 25k "fun run" to avoid burnout after beating up my body at the Cayuga Trails 50-mile at the end of May and running the FLRC Ultra Challenge two weeks before the FL50s. That made it my first time running this race in a distance

The Hyner Trail Challenge : Socialism, Bigfoot Pens, and One Big S.O.B.

The Hyner Trail Challenge is aptly described as a northeast "classic" race. The event has been around since 2009 and annually draws one of the largest fields of any trail race in the region. Like all races, the Covid-19 pandemic threw a wrench in the works for 2021. UltraSignup lists 267 finishers in the 50k and—get this—811 in the 25k in the 2019 results, not including DNFs. Other recent years show similar numbers, with over 1,000 finishers in the 25k alone in 2015. The demand for this race is insane, as are the logistics of managing that many runners on such a challenging and remote course. The race is held every April, with registration for the following year opening on May 1. As you can guess, it sells out immediately, almost a full year in advance. 

The main attraction along the course is Hyner View—a point overlooking the Susquehanna River and the PA-120 bridge 1,300 feet below, along with the surrounding forested hills. The viewpoint itself is a rectangular stone structure built by CCC workers during the Great Depression. 50k and 25k runners reach this viewpoint around mile 4 as they crest the first big hill just after its steepest slope, all the while reaping the benefits of American socialism at its finest. 

That view of the Susquehanna was two years in the making. I registered for the 2020 race on May 1, 2019—the day registration opened. Even then I had to spend a few weeks in waitlist limbo before gaining entry. This was before we knew that Hayley was due with twins in March 2020. After learning the baby news, running Hyner in April of 2020 was most definitely a no go. Then Covid struck and the race date was push back before ultimately being cancelled altogether. When RD Craig Fleming announced