A Franklin man has set a record in one of Western North Carolina’s steepest footraces.
For the past 11 years, the Assault on Black Rock trail race on Black Rock Mountain in Sylva has raised money for charity and tested trail runners’ mettle with seven grueling miles featuring nearly 3,000 feet of elevation gain. At the race’s latest installment March 21, local distance runner Canyon Woodward set the all-time speed record for the course.
“It’s a butt-kicker,” said Woodward. “It’s really fun. It’s pretty much straight up and then straight down. It’s been a while with COVID since I’ve gotten the chance to race, and that’s true for almost all of us.”
While Woodward is modest about the race and his finish, his modesty belies a truly impressive feat. At this month’s race from the base of Black Rock Mountain to the summit and back down again, Woodward completed the loop in a course-record 66 minutes and 21 seconds.
“For some reason I had it in my head that in 2018 I had run it in 50 minutes when I had actually run it in 70 minutes,” said Woodward. “It’s pretty funny – I got to the top in I think around 45 minutes or thereabouts, and it’s like ‘I’m so much slower than I used to be. I’m like 15 minutes behind my 2018 time; I’ll see if I can at least break my record on the downhill’. I took off and got to the bottom, and they told
me I’d set a course record.”
For nearly his entire life, the 2011 Franklin High School graduate has had a passion for running long-distance, much of it across the mountains of WNC. After taking home the men’s victory at the Assault on Black Rock in 2018, Woodward is now a two-time winner of the event, and last June he ran 72 miles through the Smokies on the Appalachian Trail. Compared to the event he’s training for currently however, the Assault on Black Rock looks like a sprint.
“I’m really more of a longer-distance runner nowadays,” said Woodward. “I’m training for a 106-miler in the middle of May out past Hayesville and Blairsville. It rattles some screws loose every time, but it’s good fun.”
At the Cruel Jewel race near Blairsville, Georgia on May 14, Woodward will test his skills against some of the finest trail runners in the region. The race is so strenuous that Woodward plans to consume at least half a liter of water and roughly two to three hundred calories per hour, generally in the form of calorie-rich foods like candy. He says one of the hardest parts of running such a great distance is keeping his stomach from getting upset, and hopes to complete the race in less than 26 hours of nonstop running. While running 106 straight miles might seem crazy to the average person, Woodward says the race will make him feel right at home.
“I’d been living up north for a little while and I’ve been back here all winter. It’s felt like such a gift to be back here where you can trail run all year long in the mountains, which is really pretty rare anywhere in the US,” he said. “We’ve got it pretty good here. For me, I do it for the process of training as much as I do it for the races themselves. The races are really fun, but knowing that I’m going to be running 100 miles really forces me to get out there day in and day out and run without any excuses. I just really love the process of training and being in a committed rhythm.”