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This past Sunday five hearty soles managed to hike the entire Seven Oaks trail. Troy, Paul, Taylor, Ron and myself headed out at 9am with the temp at -5. After a blistering pace of 3mph we managed to complete the trek in just over two and half hours. It was a good time and an even better workout. Taylor even managed to keep his heart rate in zone 2 for the entirety. After crunching the numbers here’s what we’ve learned:

Trail length is just over six and half miles long. That may seem a little shorter than most of you remember it being in the past, but we’ve lost a little trail this fall. First off we’ve cut out the trail around the paintball field. I know most of you are upset by this but it was getting a little too hard to keep open. Plus a little too flat if you ask me. Second we’ve decided to concede the battle with the motocross track. The trail that crosses the face was continually plowed under every season leaving us to rebuild the week before the 24. Not a fun thing to do, so for now it is out of the loop.

Next we found the course has 1733 feet of elevation gain per lap. After a little math I figured out that last year Mr. Pottorff (24hr solo winner) climbed just shy of 6 vertical miles during the 24. Not too bad. Average trail grade measures at 12%. Percentage wise the trail brakes down to 40% climbing, 40% descending and with 20% labeled as flat. Pretty impressive for Iowa.

These numbers are going to keep changing with new trail being added each year. However don’t look for any large sections of new trail this season. We’ve decided that after 4 years of large trail expansion were going to take a year to tune things up a bit. You all know the areas I’m talking about. Comments and suggestions are welcome, but help is greatly appreciated! We will be hosting quite a few work days throughout the spring and summer, so please check back here and lend a hand if you can.