Parking, registration, bathrooms, and the finish line are all within a stone's throw of each other in Browntown, but the starting line is 0.8 miles west of Browntown on Route 613 (Bentonville Road)! This is why registration and check-in ends at 8:45 AM-- because that's when we all need to begin heading over to the start. So make sure you allow yourself enough time to walk or jog to the starting line in time for the 9:00 AM start of the race. RUNNERS & SPECTATORS: PLEASE DO NOT DRIVE TO THE START. The starting line is on a narrow shoulderless road and there is nowhere legal to park. Only a couple race volunteers have permission to drive & park there.

1. This is not a fancy event! For those of you who haven't run it before, Greasy-Gooney has the low-key feel of a small club race. No finish line hoopla or inflatable arches, no DJs, no chip timing, no finisher medals, no big amenities. We don't have a big volunteer crew. Results are done manually. We do our best, but don't get your expectations too high!

2. Keep the roads clear. We are using roads which are open to traffic. Please try to stay out of the middle of roadways before the race or after you finish! This has been a bit of a problem in past years. Keep an eye out for vehicles at all times and try not to hold up local drivers.

3. Leave headphones, earbuds, audio speakers, pets, and baby strollers at home. Yes, we're serious, and yes, we won't hesitate to disqualify violators.

Detailed driving directions can be found on the directions page. Please drive carefully, particularly on Route 649 (Browntown Road), which is a hilly & winding two-lane road, prone to morning fog and wild animal crossings. This is not a road on which to speed if you are running late. Incidents/accidents are common.

Parking is limited in Browntown. We will have parking volunteers stationed on Browntown Road to point you to a spot in one of three main areas: The paved Browntown Baptist Church parking lot, a small unpaved lot sandwiched between two houses a couple hundred feet north of the Browntown Baptist Church, and in a grass field near the Browntown Community Center.

If you know anyone with whom you can carpool to the race, that might help ease our annual parking issues a bit!

	MAP OF BROWNTOWN
	(Click here for a more detailed view)

(Note: Please do not park in front of the community center, in front of the fire department substation next to the community center, or on the west side of the Gooney Manor Loop, unless otherwise instructed.

If you know anyone you can carpool with to the race, that might help ease our parking situation a bit. Skyline High School (8 miles north of Browntown, at 151 Skyline Vista Drive, Front Royal) might be a good place for carpoolers to meet up.

Browntown is a tiny little community, and we are its guests. Thus, please be respectful of the local residents! Don't walk in the middle of the road, don't block people's driveways, don't use people's shrubbery as a restroom, don't have your car radios blaring, don't start screaming or yelling for no reason, be polite to any local residents trying to pass through town, and so forth. Some residents on the course have farm animals (horses, cows, goats, sheep, etc.); you are welcome to photograph the animals but please do not feed or pet them.

Also, this being an election year, please don't mess with anyone's political signs. We won't tolerate such behavior and we will disqualify/ban any participant who is seen removing or defacing signs.

Like the last couple years, we will be doing outdoor registration & packet pick-up down by the finish line, on the small patch of land at the corner of Routes 649 and 613 directly across from the Baptist Church parking lot. (This is labeled "staging area" on our little Browntown map.) Registration will be open from about 7:45 until 8:45.

If you're preregistered, you'll need to check in and pick up your bib number (yes, we're using bib numbers again this year!), safety pins, and your Greasy-Gooney beanie if you reserved one (or more). If you're not preregistered, we'll have entry forms available for you to fill out, but you can save yourself some time by printing up an entry form at home and filling it out ahead of time. (See the registration page for entry forms.) Cash or check only; sorry, we can't take credit cards at the race site.

This year's (optional) race premium is a royal blue beanie (a.k.a. knit hat) embroidered with the race logo in white. Preregistrants who opted to receive one (or more) can pick 'em up at the registration table when checking in. For race-day registrants, beanies will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, with extras available for $10 each. (If we run out of beanies, any further race-day registrants will obviously pay the lower "no beanie" entry fee.)

We have four, yes, four leftover black & silver beanies from 2023 which will be available on race morning for $5 each. Show up early if you want one, 'coz once they're gone, they're gone!

Three portable toilets will be set up outside the community center for runners to use. The community center is a short walk of about 650 feet north of our registration tables & finish line. The bathrooms inside the Browntown Community Center will not be available for runners (which is okay, since historically their plumbing hasn't been up to handling a hundred runners anyway!).

There are NO restroom facilities at the start. The above are our only restrooms!

Again, use of personal listening devices is strictly prohibited at our event. Our course consists of very narrow, winding rural roads with blind hills and blind curves, and the route is entirely open to traffic, so we need you to be completely aware of your surroundings. Anyone seen with headphones (in or out) at any point during the race will be disqualified. Yes, again, we are 100% serious, so please don't ask. We have not had a headphone DQ at Greasy-Gooney yet, so please don't be the first! Playing music through speakers is not okay either. Other runners do not want to hear your music.

(Carrying a smartphone is fine; just don't use it for music, and leave your headphones/earbuds in your car.)

As noted earlier, the starting line is 0.8 miles west of Browntown on Route 613 (Bentonville Road). There is no parking at the start, so you're going to have to walk or jog there. (That includes spectators too.)

The starting line is located just beyond a curve in the road, in the middle of nowhere. (There will be a "START" sign there and a line across the road.) Because Route 613 is a public road and because local drivers may not be expecting to suddenly encounter a gaggle of runners, please, PLEASE stay out of the road before the start! You may wait on the road shoulders, or in the top of the driveway of house number 4859 at the starting line, until the race is ready to get started. Remain alert and keep an eye out for vehicles.

The course is open to traffic! You are responsible for your own safety. The Gooney Manor Loop, onto which you'll be turning just a couple minutes into the race, is a very narrow road until about mile 4, and while it sees very little traffic, you may encounter a car or truck or two. Please do your best to move to the side of the road and give vehicles room to pass by.

The Gooney Manor Loop widens shortly before the 4 mile mark. We recommend that you run on the left side of the road for the remainder of the race. Technically you may "run the tangents" if you so desire, but the impetus is on you to get out of the way if a vehicle comes rumbling by! They have the right of way, since they weigh a lot more than you do.

Also, this year the finish line will also be set up on the left side of the road (your left!), so as you pass the 6 mile mark and reach the final stretch, please keep to the left side of the road if you aren't running on the left already.

Running up the narrow Gooney Manor Loop during the 2001 Greasy-Gooney 10K

We expect to have just one water stop this year, located in its usual place between mile 3 and the 5K mark, right up at the top of the hill.If you think you will need more water than this, please carry additional water with you.

Standard water stop etiquette applies-- don't throw your used cups off into the woods where our volunteers won't be able to see 'em, and don't hang onto your cup for a mile and then chuck it (since our volunteers probably won't be looking for cups very far down the road). And, of course, say "thank you" if you're not too out of breath!

Should be pretty good! The leaves have been turning for a couple weeks now and we're nearing peak color in the coming week.

Unfortunately due to the small size of our race, on-site medical assistance is not available. Cell phone reception is also poor to nonexistent along the majority of the course. If you experience a medical emergency during the race, response time may be long. As such, participation is not recommended for runners or walkers with known conditions that may pose an increased risk of medical emergencies.

Please keep an eye on your fellow runners during the race, and render assistance if you see somebody in distress. Helping a runner in distress is more important than completing the race!

Walkers are welcome to participate, but be aware that we only have one water stop, so you might want to carry some water and/or snacks with you. The awards ceremony may be over before some walkers finish, but we'll keep the clock running!

This is not your everyday 10K course, so if you're one of the speedsters, it pays to put some thought into how you're going to approach the race. This course is probably going to be at least a minute slower than your typical 10K (and probably more), primarily because of the gradual incline over the first 2½ miles and particularly because of the steep bit from mile 2.55 to 3.05. So adjust your estimates accordingly! It's a good idea to hold back a little over the first half and then try to make up ground over the downhill second half. Check out the Course Information page for maps and elevation profiles, or study people's 5K split times from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022, and/or 2023 to get a sense of how different the two halves of the course are. (We did not record split times in 2018 due to rain.)

For the third year in a row, we are using bib numbers for scoring! Please wear your bib number on the FRONT of your person. When you near the finish line, make sure your bib number is fully visible to our volunteers, and once you cross the finish line, stay in order behind anyone who crossed in front of you until one of our volunteers collects the tear-off tag from the bottom of your number. No finish cards this year, so once your bib tag has been pulled, you're free to go cool down or get some refreshments!

Also, please, please, please do not cross the finish line twice! After you've finished, you are welcome to jog back out on the course and meet up with a friend or family member who's still running-- but please veer away well before the finish line so as not to confuse our volunteers and throw off our results.

And although it should go without saying, spectators and unregistered runners should never cross the finish line.

Right by the finish line, we'll have water, bananas, and chips. This is a low-budget race, so we can't afford much more than that!

If all goes well, we will conduct the awards ceremony right there by the finish line & refreshment tables around 10:30 AM, maybe a few minutes later. There may be a few runners and walkers still out on the course at 10:30. If you're one of those who won't be finishing before then, please don't worry-- our finish line crew will still be timing you!

If you cannot stick around for the awards ceremony, we will try to mail your trophy to you-- but we'd really rather not, given that it'll cost us quite a bit in postage and packaging (a big additional expense for a low-fee, low-budget, low-profit race such as this one). So do try and stick around if you can! (Please feel free to e-mail the race director if you have to leave early, wind up winning an award, and you live nearby & want the race director to drop your award off for you somewhere.)

An assortment of around thirty to forty extremely cheap random prizes will be handed out at the conclusion of the awards ceremony. We call your name; you pick a prize from the prize table. (Needless to say, you must be present to win.) The prize table will include many bags of Halloween candy and some assorted knick-knacks.

We encourage you to stop by O.J. Rudacille's General Store in Browntown and buy a snack and/or souvenir, because store proprietor Tom Lacombe is always a big help to us year in and year out. The store is right across the bridge on Bentonville Road (Route 613)-- you'll see it on your left as you walk to the starting line before the race. Tom's store has snacks, cold drinks, and various Browntown keepsakes.

NEARBY EVENT ON RACE DAY THIS YEAR: The South Warren Volunteer Fire Department is hosting a Holiday Bazaar right over in Bentonville, about 6 miles away, from 9 AM to 2 PM! "Holiday vendors and crafts, Handmade goods and much more! We also will be having a bake sale, and our kitchen will be open!" So after the race, why not head west on Bentonville Road (Route 613) to U.S. 340, take a right, and pop into the South Warren VFD less than a mile up the road? (3330 Stonewall Jackson Hwy, Bentonville, VA 22610.)

Looking for other things to do in the area on Saturday? Skyline Drive & Shenandoah National Park will be a popular destination on race weekend; perhaps too popular, as there will surely be a long line of cars waiting to get in at the Front Royal entrance station off of Route 340. The one week single-vehicle fee is $30. Skyline Caverns, also off of 340 near Front Royal, is another popular local tourist site; adult entry there is $28 per person. Front Royal's tourism web site has plenty more ideas for things to do, places to eat, etc.! We've listed a few other local attractions at the bottom of our directions page.

The final race results will be published here on this site within a few days of the race... Possibly by race evening if things go smoothly! Assuming we get some good shots, we're also planning to post high(ish)-resolution photos for download, both on the race director's personal site and on Facebook.

We are most grateful for the support of the Shenandoah Valley Runners running club, and we encourage you to get involved with the SVR. Their fun, low-key eight-race Winter Series begins in early December and is a great way to find out what the club is about.

We're also grateful to Pastor Kaipha Brown and the Browntown Baptist Church for allowing us to use their parking lot for over two decades now!

A big thank you to the Mikels family for permitting us to stage up on their little patch of land by the finish line. We are most appreciative! Thank you as well to the Berrys for putting up with our starting line being in front of their house for so many years.

All proceeds from the race will be donated to the Browntown Community Center Association and the Humane Society of Warren County. Last year we were able to contribute $720.80 to each organization!

You can get in touch with race director Karsten Brown by e-mail or by phone at (540) 635-1773.