Venice, Florida Coo-Wah-Chobee 50K Trail Race

Staci and I were visiting Rich’s parents in North Carolina for his Dad’s 95th birthday. Whenever we travel we try to find an interesting marathon (or longer) race to do in the area. We found the Coo-Wah-Chobee 50K trail race in the beautiful Carlton Reserve in Venice, Florida. Coo-Wah-Chobee is what the Seminole’s called the Florida Panther “The Keeper of the Glades”. Fortunately we didn’t see any Panthers during the race. Unfortunately there are only 200 of them left in wild Florida as they were almost hunted to extinction.

The 25,000 acre Carlton Reserve ranges from almost jungle-like wetlands to dry prairie and has 80 miles of hiking/running trails.

Prior to the race we spent a day exploring Venice.

Venice is a very nice beach town with typical long, sandy gulf beaches.

Getting ready to run 31 miles on rough trails !

Staci running through the forrest at the beginning of the race.

The trails were a mixture of rough single-track, wide sandy rough double-track and a few forest roads. Although it was completely flat the running was challenging.

We had a really fun day running our 17th state marathon+ together. Staci made the Women’s podium and came in third !!!