ThorpeWood Trails: Don’t Just Take Our Word For It

trophyAs you know, ThorpeWood’s annual 5K Fun Walk/Run 10K Trail Run, is scheduled for Sunday, September 6th.  Registration is now open on active.com.  You can click here to be taken to our registration page.  All proceeds from this event will be used to help offset the costs associated with bringing the kids from the Frederick County YMCA Head Start program up here to ThorpeWood to participate in our Equine Assisted Learning programs as well as other wonderful activities here at ThorpeWood.  You know that we depend on your support of this annual event: it is our only fundraiser all year!  We certainly hope that you can make it out!

This year we are unveiling our new course marking system:  two different cone colors will mark the courses – lime green for 10K and orange for 5K.  We are really excited to have partnered with Traffic Safety Store to enable us to try something new, using different colored cones thorough out each course to delineate either 5K (orange)  or 10K (lime green).  The same colors will be used for runner’s bibs.  Marking a trail run is quite different from a road race, and we are excited to try out this new approach to marking our trails.  We will talk more about all of our partners and sponsors in an upcoming post.

We feel that our trail run is unique in a county full of fantastic running events.  We have already told you about the wonderful cause it supports, now we would like to turn to Frederick’s own running guru, Mark Lawrence, and let him tell you what makes this event truly unique in our area. Mark and The Frederick Steeplechasers has been involved with our run since our first event in 2008, and we certainly couldn’t START or FINISH without him!

“ThorpeWood is a unique event for our area,” said Mark. “It is an event that gives lesser experienced runners a well marked course providing a good taste of the challenges of trail running, while at the same time offering enough of a challenge for very avid trail runners.  If nothing else, it makes for a great hike at a beautiful mountain retreat that they may otherwise not have the opportunity to see.  Absolutely one of my favorite events on our running calendar!”trailrunner

And Mark knows what he speaks of, friends!  Not only is he vital to the mission of the Frederick Steeplechasers Running Club – learn more about them here; but he is a chi running instructor through his business Self-Propel and has helped countless runners in our community, young and old alike. Learn more about Mark’s passion for chi running by visiting this website.

Thanks for your kind words, Mark.  And thanks to all of you who have already registered to participate on September 6.  Everyone else – there is still plenty of time to register online and we will even have same day registration available on the 6th.  Hope to see you all there!