Prepping for the James River Run

In just over two weeks, the City of Richmond Virginia will be taken over by the Xterra family for the East Coast Regional Xterra Championship. The course is truly unique -- laid out in the middle of the city, yet one of the more challenging courses. The swim is in the James River (more coming on that), the mountain bike course is 18 miles of Island trails, park trails neighboring the river, and a little bit of road (very little). Its amazing how they crammed so many miles of trail in an urban setting. The run is probably the most diverse of them all with a little bit of everything...pavement, grass, steep steps, fire road, black-top road, bridges, more steps, rooty-twisty wooded trail, and the part most interesting - river rocks - right out in the river. And they are HUGE. Some require a bit of crawling. And its sorta like a maze figuring the best way to go to avoid having to backtrack because of a moat you can't get over. I'm guessing if its high water, the course changes over the rocks. But the year I did it, we rock-hopped a sizeable portion of the run. It's truly unique. So how do you train for something like that? Get out and find some rocks! Jersey Jo Pa did.