Possum’s Revenge Course Guide

The loop: rock, root, sand, and rolling climbs

The loop throws a little of everything at you. Rocky and rooty in places, soft sand in others, short punchy climbs that never let you settle into one gear, and flatter runnable stretches where you can actually move, all with the lake out there as the reward. None of the climbs are long enough to call a mountain, but the constant up-and-down on uneven footing chews your legs more than the elevation number suggests. Quick feet and a willingness to power-hike the steep bits early will save your quads for later laps.

The big advantage of a loop is that lap one teaches you the course. Pay attention the first time through: where the climbs are, where you can run free, where the footing turns ankle-rolly, where the aid sits. By lap two or three you know exactly where to push and where to back off, and that knowledge is worth a lot when you are tired.

The heat: mid-May Texas is the real climb

The mountains here are made of weather, not rock. Mid-May in North-Central Texas can be hot and sticky, and the exposed sections of the loop bake under afternoon sun. The runners who blow up at Possum’s Revenge usually do it by going out at a pace that ignores the heat, then cooking themselves on lap two while it is hottest. Start conservative, drink and salt early, and treat the first loop as the warm-up it is, not a chance to bank time.

The flip side is the night. The 52 and 69 keep you out there well past dark, and once the sun drops the temperature finally becomes your friend. A lot of people find their best running of the day in those cooler night laps, as long as they did not wreck themselves in the heat first. Get to dark in one piece and the back half opens up.

The laps and the cutoffs: keep clearing the loop

Because it is looped, the cutoffs are really a per-lap math problem. There is an 11:00 PM Saturday deadline to start your final loop and a 5:00 AM Sunday cutoff for everything, so what matters is whether you keep coming through the start/finish fast enough to be sent back out. Figure out the per-loop time you need, then build in cushion, because heat, fatigue, and the dark all stretch your later laps longer than your first.

This is also where the loop format is a gift. Your drop bag is right there at the start/finish every 17.35 miles, so you can keep a headlamp, a warm layer, dry socks, and your next round of food staged and ready. Treat each lap-through like a quick pit stop with a checklist, not a place to sit down and lose twenty minutes.

The mental game: same loop, three or four times

Nobody warns you enough about this part. Running the identical loop three or four times is a head game, and somewhere in the middle laps your motivation will dip just from the sameness of it. That is normal here. Break the race into laps instead of miles, give yourself a small reward or a job for each one, and lean on the start/finish energy every time you come through.

Pick a couple of landmarks on the loop to look forward to, and run from one to the next instead of staring at the whole distance. The people who finish the long distances at Possum’s Revenge are rarely the fastest; they are the ones who keep their head together on the loop that feels like it will never end.

Pace the loop by effort, not the watch

Your flat-road pace will lie to you on this terrain, especially in the heat. What matters is grade-adjusted effort: hold a steady output you can actually repeat for every lap, power-hike the short climbs without guilt, and run the runnable stretches relaxed. The classic Possum’s Revenge mistake is banking time on a cool, fresh first loop and then paying it all back, with interest, when the sun is high on lap two. Use a grade-adjusted pace to turn your real fitness into honest targets for the climbs and the flats so you do not torch the early laps.

Build a finish prediction that respects the loops and the heat

Do not guess your Possum’s Revenge finish off a flat road time. The repeating vert, the rocky and sandy footing, the Texas heat, and the night laps all add real time, and your later loops will be slower than your first. A finish prediction that accounts for the climbing per loop gives you a realistic window, and then you can work backward into the 11:00 PM final-loop deadline so you know exactly what per-lap pace keeps you legal.

Carbs: steady, trained, and easy to get down

For a multi-hour effort, aim for around 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, and only push the higher end if your gut is trained for it. Heat kills your appetite and slows digestion, so keep your intake steady and simple instead of gambling on big catch-up doses late. The loop format helps here: stage your next round of food in your start/finish drop bag and grab it every lap, and practice your exact race-day carb rate on hot long runs so 80-plus grams an hour feels routine, not like an experiment.

Sodium and fluid: it is cupless, so carry your own

In the heat, lean toward the high end on sodium, often around 500 to 700 milligrams per liter of fluid, and more if you are a heavy or salty sweater. Possum’s Revenge is a cupless race, so you carry your own bottle or flask and refill at the aid stations rather than counting on cups, and you will want enough capacity to cover the gaps between stops on a hot loop. Weigh yourself before and after a hot long run to find your real sweat rate, then build the plan around your own number instead of a generic guess.