by: Jared Bolton
Thursday, May 2, 2019 | 12:05 PM
Welcome to Quick Fill.
Yes, we ARE racing this weekend. It’s no secret that it’s been raining on and off out in Indiana but this weekend’s X Factor GNCC is still on. The good news is that the landowner, Russ Bellar, has put in a lot of work to make some good roads through the facility. There are nearly 4,000 truckloads of millings (that crushed up asphalt like you see at Ironman) through the field now, so getting in won’t be an issue. The grass in the fields is pretty wet and muddy, but out in the woods there’s dry dirt to be found in some places. So you can expect some wet conditions this weekend, but right now it’s not looking like the same kind of mudder we had in 2017.
As for the track, we’ve been hard at it this week and have a pretty fun course for this weekend. We’ve been able to wind back and forth in some areas we’ve never done that in before and with countless hundreds of feet of string to separate sections of racecourse, we’ve been able to add a little extra mileage as well. When you take off from the start you’ll be running a long field section before hitting a short patch of open woods and into another field. Early in the day this will be a little wet and sloppy, but once you cut through that top layer it has potential to harden up as the weekend wears on.
You’ll head into the woods at the two-mile mark and you’ve got a section of open woods that zigzags back and forth. You’ll cross over to a fast section up to the big mulch pile before heading back into the woods at the three-mile mark. There’s some flowing trail through there with a few ups and downs, plus a couple off-camber sections that take you over to the four-mile mark where things will tighten up a little bit. That tighter stuff leads to some flowing woods to the five-mile mark and a few more sections where you’re going up and down some really fun rolling hills.
It’s a pretty similar story all the way to the six-mile mark, where it will open up just a little bit to the seven. There’s a 1PM only section at the seven-mile mark that drops down into a valley with a couple of different options up a big hill at the FMF Powerpoint. Once you’re up the hill, you’ll come back down a ravine into the valley again, before coming back out the other side and head over to the eight-mile mark.
After the eight, there’s even more sections where you’re going up, down and off-camber on a number of hills before you drop into a little creek bed to the nine-mile mark. This brings you to some open woods all the way to the ten-mile mark, where you’ll pop out into a short field section before dropping into some open woods where you’re zigzagging back and forth again. That takes you into the field again where you’ll run all the way around to the eleven-mile mark and into the finish.
Once you head out of the finish, you’ve got a grass track section that brings you back into the big field again, through the pro pits and back to the start. The full loop is 11.2 miles, which is a pretty good bit for this property. Like I said before, it will be wet in places but the entire course is very passable and there’s a lot of really fun trail out there.
Of course, as you can imagine, we’re slammed with getting everything prepared for this weekend’s event, so we’ll keep this edition of Quick Fill a bit on the quick side. Until next week, enjoy your weekend and we’ll see you in Indiana!