There is a theme for every race and this year for Promise Land (PL) it was the high stream crossings. On Monday and Tuesday of race week, there was a huge rain event. When we marked the race course on Wednesday, I was so...
Articles by David Horton
In 2016 and 2017, we had 220 finishers at the Holiday Lake 50K. In 2018, we had 166 finishers. Of the 166 finishers, 90 percent were from Virginia. This is the future of ultrarunning in Virginia as well as across the nat...
Hellgate 100K is actually 66.6 miles starting at 12:01 a.m. on the second Saturday in December at the northern terminus of the Glenwood Horse Trail at the Big Hellgate Parking lot next to Big Hellgate Creek in Central Vi...
In 2015, the Hellgate 100K had its hottest year ever, reaching a high of 78 degrees. The 2016 Hellgate reached its lowest ever at 8 degrees. Which year did I like best? This year was more like the Hellgate weather that y...
The 2016 Promise Land 50K was held on April 30. This was the 16th year of the race on the exact same course for every year. I really believe it is the best 50k in the East. You may say I am biased because I created it, a...
The December 2015 Hellgate 100K was our hottest year ever, with temperatures in the mid to high 70s. But Holiday Lake, only weeks later, was a different story. This year, at the 21st running of Holiday Lake 50K, we had a...
Typical weather for the Hellgate 100K is in the 20s and low teens at night, with highs in the 40s during the day, and precipitation is very possible. Not this year. At night it was in the 40s, with the highs getting into...
The Promise Land 50K has it all: big climbs, big descents, a spectacular waterfall, beautiful streams, single-track trails, a pre-race pizza blast, a spectacular bonfire, free camping at the start/finish, a post-race bar...
There are six races in the Beast Series. The easiest one is the Holiday Lake 50K (HL). It has just over 2,100 feet of elevation gain with a variety of surfaces (single-track trail, forest service roads and 1.4 miles of p...
The 12th running of Hellgate was the last race in the six-race Beast Series. Thirty-eight males and seven females attempted to complete the series. A field of 148 runners (the largest starting field ever) started with th...