The Chocolate Bunny 50K +

April 19-20, 2003

By Tom Corris

Easter Bunny Well the MMT Nighttime Training Run, hereafter known as the Chocolate Bunny 50k+, was a complete success. In spite of being held on Easter, we drew a significant crowd of right at three runners. Brian McNeill, Rich Kerby and I departed the 211 Parking Lot on Saturday evening and arrived at Powell’s Fort Camp shortly before dawn on Easter Sunday morning. It was quite foggy, a bit chilly (39F at Powell’s), slippery at times, and it was dark. And there were rocks, lots of rocks, big rocks, little rocks, and even some mean rocks. Even a couple of mean trees too.

We met up at Elizabeth’s Furnace on Saturday afternoon and decided to cut out the Bird Knob section and make the run a 50k. We drove south dropping plastic buckets with our supplies at the MMT 100 aide stations along the way. We put the buckets in green trash bags to make them less visible and sprinkled a bit of bleach around them to make them less attractive to the bears and the other forest creatures. I’m not sure if the bleach helped or not but all the buckets were undisturbed when we arrived. However that could have just as easily been due to the effort required to remove the bloody lids. Next time I’ll bring a screwdriver.

Tom in the Massanutten Mts All in all the trails looked good. All of the trees across the trail on Short Mountain that we had to negotiate on the post working party run had been cleared. But they were kind enough to leave all of the rocks in place.

We all came out relatively unscathed except for a few minor scratches here and there. As the run coordinator, I did take the opportunity to demonstrate how to fall off a log. I think Brian and Rich must have been very impressed with my performance because neither one of them wanted to try it.

The awards ceremony was short and sweet; chocolate bunnies for everybody, which we decided to, eat later. And speaking of chocolate bunnies, when you see Brian please congratulate him on saving Easter for all of the children in Fort Valley. On the way back to the 211 Parking Lot in a very heavy fog, he some how managed to avoid squishing at least a dozen of the Easter Bunny’s helpers scrambling to deliver the last of their treats. That was truly amazing.

Tom Corris