WESTWOOD, Mass. – Thirty miles and around 7 1/2 hours into his race, Patrick McEnaney made efficient work at the aid station. A wardrobe change, some extra snacks and refilled fluids, and he was ready to head back out for more. As McEnaney prepared to return to the trail, he paused to check in with a friend whose race was done and commend them for a successful day.
After a few congratulatory words and a fist bump, it was time to go.
“I have to get moving,” McEnaney said, a look of urgency on his face. “I’m starting to freeze.”
Following a one-week postponement due to a massive Nor’easter, the Trail Animals Running Club played host to the third running of the TARCtic Frozen Yeti 30-Hour Ultra and the first edition of the 15-mile night race on Feb. 5-6 at Hale Reservation in Westwood, Mass.
The Trail Animals Running Club has postponed the TARCtic Frozen Yeti 30-Hour Ultra and 15-mile night trail race by one week, the race directors announced in an email to runners at 6:11 p.m. today.
The resurrection of the Trail Animals Running Club’s TARC Trail Series continued this morning with the opening of registration for the TARC Spring Classic.
Though the Trail Animals Running Club’s Wapack and Back Trail Races officially offer 50-mile and 21.5-mile events, runners are offered the option of signing up for the 50-miler but stopping after 43. That somewhat unofficial race distance represents the successful completion of a full out-and-back of the Wapack Trail, so it is a significant feat. In fact, the last time runners toed the starting line at Wapack and Back, the most dazzling performances were delivered in that most unusual of race distances.
One of the true privileges I’ve enjoyed during my dozen years as a trail-runner has been the opportunity to share the trails with so many wonderful people. It began with my earliest runs on the dirt in Kansas City, a know-nothing newbie weaving through the trees and hopping over rocks and roots alongside far more experienced runners who chatted away about the 50-mile and 100-mile races at Rocky Raccoon that they were training for. In the weeks and months that followed, they educated me on all sorts of things, from hydration systems to consider, to which week it would grow dark enough that I should start bringing a headlamp, to other trails in the area I should explore.
The Trail Animals Running Club typically has evaded early-winter hibernation with the annual running of the Fells Winter Ultra during the first weekend of December at the Middlesex Fells Reservation. That wasn’t the case in 2020, however; the club was forced to cancel the event as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the trail ultrarunning schedule locally and globally.
The Fells Winter Ultra made its return on Saturday, Dec. 4, as runners once again flocked to the trailhead in Stoneham, Mass., to tackle four or five loops of the reservation’s rocky and rugged Skyline Trail in 32- and 40-mile races.
The Trail Animals Running Club played host to its annual running of the Fells Winter Ultra on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, at the Middlesex Fells Reservation in Stoneham, Mass. Runners tackled either four or five 8-mile loops of the Skyline Trail in 32-mile and 40-mile trail ultramarathons.
In March of 2020, the To Hale and Back 6-Hour Ultra and 5K became the first Massachusetts trail ultramarathon to be a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just seven weeks earlier, the Trail Animals Running Club had played host to the TARCtic Frozen Yeti 30-Hour Ultra on some of the same trails at Hale Reservation in Westwood, Mass., in the first of what was supposed to be a 10-race season for the TARC Trail Series.
WINCHESTER, Mass. — Less than 24 hours before the start of the TARCkey Trot 6-Hour Ultra, Race Director Jeff LeBlanc found himself inundated with rain. He was marking the 3.1-mile loop course through Wright-Locke Farm and Whipple Hill when a heavy thunderstorm moved over Winchester, soaking him within seconds and blasting him with heavy wind. As fast as the rain fell, leaves dropped from the trees all around him almost as quickly, expediting their autumn transition and hiding many of the course’s network of rocks and twisting tree roots.
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