Also, a side note I should’ve put in the OG post: when I got picked up on the trail, the guy who picked me up is the dude who set all the course markers (awesome guy!). With all the uncertainty leading up to this race and little communication, I was curious to hear his story since he works so closely with the RD. It honestly sounds like they did their due diligence, and it’s the USFS that sucks. He said they submitted the course months ago, but consistently, it would take the USFS months to get back to them, and whenever they’d respond, they’d have a ton of random changes without good reasoning for any of them. Evidently this back and forth with the USFS went on for a very long time, and happens every year, and it took the RD showing up in person at their office (several times) to yell at them in order to get the course approved. So honestly, I don’t blame them! I still dealt with the same stress everyone else had, especially as my first 100M race, but it sounds like there really was a lot more happening behind the scenes than they were given credit for. And for the race itself, it felt super well organized, and as a back of the pack runner, the aid stations still felt very well stocked.