OMG this race is gonna be so awesome! I can't wait to see all the smiling faces! All the (potentially) muddy feet! You guys are gonna have so much fun on this race!

OMG I'm so excited to run my first 50 with the Hawks! Is it the 22nd already?!

Looking forward to seeing all your bright smiling and muddy faces tomorrow! :) Good luck everyone!

Thanks for a great race with first class support all along the way! Still can't believe all the mud we went through. Loved the river crossing and all the support. Two more finishers: ticks.

Thank you Gary, Coleen and all the volunteers who helped make the Hawk 50 a success! I'll be back next year as long as you can guarantee there will be plenty of mud.

Volunteering at this race was a lot of fun! Nick was an awesome aid station leader at Swim Beach (although there was NO beach since the lake was up so high). Our theme was still a beach theme and Nick went all out with a coconut bra, grass skirt, flower leis (spelling?). I’m sure there is a picture somewhere of him modeling and doing a hula dance. "Roxy the dog" provided good entertainment and she was very useful with her bug catching/eating skills! Getting to know the other volunteers at the aid station was great! (Nick, Elizabeth, Eric V., and Jeff). The runners (and walkers) that came thru were all very nice and gave us lots of “thank you for being here!” comments. A very big Thank you to the Trail Hawk organization for the volunteer gifts also (mug, shirt, and food/drink!!) If I don’t run the marathon next year, I will definitely volunteer again!

I want to personally and on behalf of my mom and dad THANK Gary and all the volunteers (especially Chris on more directions and the start/finish aid station volunteers for talking with my parents) for giving my parents excellent directions for coming to "see" me run in this race. This is the FIRST time ever both my parents have seen me run ANY race (including 5Ks and marathons). They ended their vacation early and came all the way from Lake of the Ozarks (they are from Lake City, IA - about 8 hours away) just to try to catch me in the race. Because of your help, they were able to catch me at the start/finish after I had run about 26 miles and only about 5 minutes after they got there. What a great memory to cherish!!! I also want to thank ALL the volunteers for putting on such a GREAT race. More specifically, I want to thank all the aid station volunteers for going above and beyond; whenever I came up to them, someone would always be on their feet ready to take my water bottle and fill it up. And a BIG THANK YOU for all the volunteers who stayed LATE, patiently waiting for me to finish after 14 long hours! :-) Not only staying late, but being right there to help me take off my shoes and provide me YUMMY food at the finish. Loved the vegan burgers and beans! Trailmix was awesome, too. I also want to personally thank Dick Ross for taking his time to be at the race to capture another great memory for me. I really appreciate Dick being there EARLY to take excellent pictures AND for waiting patiently at the river crossing to capture a great moment. Thanks, Dick! What a GREAT experience this race was! This was only my 2nd (and certainly not last) ultra trail run. In fact, this is only my 2nd trail run ever; I am an urban paved trail and road runner. Haha, I even felt out of place with my road marathon shoes. There was certainly not a dull moment in this race. It was the most technical, challenging (I felt like I was in Survivor!) but FUN race I've ever run. Beautiful scenery (I want to go back and hike the trails and enjoy the lake and parks!), perfect weather, lots of wildlife (did anyone see that poisonous red and yellow snake near the shore?)...I saw about 9 snakes, 2 turtles (no, they were not rocks), a deer, lots of hawks and a few imaginary creatures toward the end when I was half-disoriented. :-) I always say that every long-distance race (half marathon and full marathon) is 2/3 physical and 1/3 mental; this race was 100% physical and 100% mental. Boy, my cross-training and rigorous diet sure paid off!!! The more difficult and challenging the course became, the more I was determined to finish. At times I wished I had go-go gadget legs and arms. Hehe. I now have a lot more respect for trails. BTW, mud is an excellent natural sunblock! Thanks again, everyone, for putting on such a great race and for all your kindness and help. I hope to post some pics to my Facebook account. Rest up now!

i had an absolute blast, even though i had to change from the 50 to the marathon, it was flippin' awesome. the i.t. band is feeling much better, it was a shame it went out at mile 3, but i never say quit, just make an acceptable change and enjoy the experience. i was thrilled with the day, i was so happy to see the water crossing and Dick there to get the shots. all the volunteers that listened to my banter, gave me a pick up to keep going, bless you all. can't wait for next time, whoohoo!!!

heard you all decimated the trails by having this event when the trails were muddy. Good work!

Great job guys, sounds like you had a blast running the trail into the ground, resulting in a now trashed trail system that will take the hard work and sweat of OTHER people to fix. Hope every one of you runners enjoyed you little race, and enjoyed that "natural" sunblock known as mud. And to the race promoter, well, I won't say much. I'm sure you'll experience the fallout of what you've done for many days down the road. Way to go guys!

CB Jones, Thanks for your concern. But the Trail hawks are just as dedicated to building, cleaning and maintaining trails as we are to putting on fun events for runners. We work very closely with the Kansas Trails Council to clean, build and maintain the trails out at Clinton Lake.

Nick: I do not see a trail repair day listed on your website. Did I miss it somewhere?

We work with the KTC to determine what days they are available for trail maintenance. An official repair day has not been set up. But as it stands it's far to muddy to bring in the equipment needed to do any substantial trail work. We _WILL_ be working with KTC to further maintain these trails long into the future as well with the Trail Masons. We are not here to run and dash. This is our back yard. This is our home. Every year since our inception, we've had a trail cleaning day in April, where we go and collect dozens of bags of trash that have blown over the trails from the campsites, and from various other users of the trail leaving behind trash and debris.

Dedication to maintaining trails is not trashing them in bad conditions just so the event can go on as scheduled. Sounds like the trail volunteers have a lot of work cut out for them due to this event. And people wonder why trail access gets denied....

NicK: So is it your position that even though you will "repair" the trails sometime into the future it is ok to leave them unusable for weeks or months because you were unwilling to postpone a race?

Depressed, Please read: http://lawrencetrailhawks.com/blog/2010/may/25/post-race-trail-conditions/

Good grief people... those trails are always muddy and they're TRAILS, they'll be just fine. If you want to complain about something, complain about the oil spill that is destroying the gulf.

Just because you can repair something (eventually), doesn't mean you should go ahead and trash it today. I think Mike Goodwin made a bad decision to allow the race, and all the volunteers will now pay for it. I have put in many, many hours building, maintaining, and reparing trails, and repairing damaged trail is the least rewarding aspect of it. And trust me, the best time to repair wet trails is when it's wet, not when it has dried out, but don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm talking about. Those trails are "always wet" because uneducated users go out a day before the trails are ready, and rut them up. Then they hold water longer the next time, and the problem gets progressively worse. Guys, please don't run this event in poor conditions again. Oh, and I have heard that there is still a decent amount of tape, pin flags and gu packs out on the trail. Gotta do a better job of picking that stuff of day-of.