Old Dominion 100 Mile Endurance Run Course Guide

The opening: town, the river, and the first climb

You start at 4:00 AM in the dark and roll out through historic Woodstock for the first few miles on pavement and road before the course heads for the hills. Around the early miles you reach the Shenandoah River at Burnshire Dam and cross by bridge, then hit the first real ascent of the day up to Woodstock Gap on a steep gravel switchback into the George Washington National Forest.

This opening stretch is fast and feels easy, and that is the danger. It is tempting to bank time on the runnable early miles while it is still cool and dark, but you are spending legs you will want for the technical night section and the closing road push. Settle in. The day is long and the heat is coming.

The runnable middle: gravel, dirt, and the heat

Through the middle of the race you spend a lot of time on gravel and dirt forest roads with rolling climbs, the kind of terrain where your legs want to cruise and the miles tick by. Honestly, the footing here is the friendly part of Old Dominion. The hard part is what the day is doing to you while you run it.

Virginia in early June can be genuinely hot and humid, and that humidity is the real adversary on this course. Your sweat does not evaporate the way it does in dry mountain air, so your core temperature creeps up, your stomach slows, and your appetite disappears right when you need calories most. The runnable road is a gift only if you have kept yourself cool and fueled. Treat the heat and humidity as the main event from the very start.

The night crux: Sherman Gap and Veach Gap

The character of the race flips late. From the Elizabeth Furnace aid station near mile 75, most runners head into the hardest, most technical stretch of the whole course in the dark: the steep grind up Sherman Gap, then down to the old wagon road that General Daniel Morgan built during the Revolution, up and over Veach Gap, and down a rocky boulder-strewn descent on the west side toward the Veach West aid station near mile 86. This is the section the race lets you bring a safety runner for, and there is a reason.

These climbs are short next to the western giants, but they are steep, rocky, and unforgiving on tired legs at 2 in the morning. Practice technical climbing and careful downhill on rough footing before race day, and carry good light. The people who finish strong here are the ones who saved something for these gaps instead of leaving it all on the runnable early road.

The finish: Mountain Top and the long road home

After the gaps you climb Mountain Top, and then the race finishes the way it started, on road. The closing stretch runs miles of pavement and gravel back toward Woodstock with a couple thousand feet of late climbing folded in, and it is fully runnable, which sounds like good news and is actually its own test.

By now the sun is usually back up and the exposure, heat, and humidity have stacked on top of 90-plus miles of fatigue. This is where the buckle is won or lost. If your legs and your gut are still working you can run nearly the whole way in and chase that 24-hour mark. If you cooked yourself earlier, those last miles on hard road turn into a long, hot shuffle against the clock.

Aid stations, cutoffs, and crew

The course is well supported with roughly 24 aid stations day and night, with the usual hydration and snacks plus some heavier hot food (think pancakes and burgers) at a few of them, and medical checkpoints along the way. The hard cutoff to know is Elizabeth Furnace near mile 75, where you must check out by midnight, with other intermittent cutoffs along the route.

The overall structure is 24 hours for the sterling silver buckle and 28 hours to officially finish. Safety runners are allowed for the night crux, roughly from Elizabeth Furnace at mile 75 to the Veach West aid station near mile 86, so plan your crew and pacer around getting a fresh set of eyes with you for the gaps in the dark. Pull the current aid-station and cutoff sheet from the official race and build your splits backward from those times.

Do not get drunk on the runnable early miles

The classic Old Dominion mistake is banking too much time on the fast, cool, dark early road because it feels effortless, then paying for it in the heat of the afternoon and on the Sherman and Veach climbs. Run the early gravel by easy effort, not by the splits your watch says you are capable of. Use a grade-adjusted pace to keep your output honest on the rolling road and the first climb so you are not cashing in legs you will desperately want at mile 80.

Build a finish prediction that respects the heat and the clock

Do not guess your Old Dominion finish off a cool, flat road time. The 14,000 feet of climbing matters, but the humidity and the technical night section add real time on top of it, and the 24-hour buckle is a tight target on a runnable course. Build a vert-aware finish prediction, then reality-check it against the Elizabeth Furnace midnight cutoff and the 24-hour mark so you know exactly how much buffer you are carrying into the night.

Pace the humidity, not just the miles

On a hot, humid day, deliberately easing off to keep your core temperature down is faster over 100 miles than pushing through and overheating. Bank time early only if you can do it while staying cool, which on a humid Virginia June day usually means barely at all. Get yourself to the gaps with legs and a working stomach, survive the technical night, and let the runnable finish be where you actually race the clock.

Carbs: steady, trained, and eaten even when you do not want to

For a day this long, aim for roughly 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, leaning to the high end only if your gut is trained for it. Use a glucose-plus-fructose blend so you can actually absorb the higher numbers, and rehearse your exact hourly carb rate on long runs so 80-plus grams an hour feels normal, not like an experiment at mile 70. The humidity is the catch: a hot, sloshing stomach takes in less, and your appetite vanishes, so keep the intake steady and easy to swallow rather than gambling on big late doses.

Sodium and fluid: bias up for humid sweat

In humid heat your sweat does not evaporate well, so you keep pouring it out and your sodium losses climb. Bias your sodium toward the high end, often around 500 to 700 milligrams per liter of fluid and more if you run salty, and use the aid stations to cool down with ice and water every chance you get. Weigh yourself before and after a hot, humid long run to find your real sweat rate, then build the plan around your own number instead of a generic one. Cramping and that hollow, wrung-out late-race feeling are usually fluid and sodium problems, not fitness problems.