The 2021 race season came to an end (I think) with the third Fallen Leaves 5K of the year. In race #1 I maintained my streak of running each race faster than the one before. I missed race #2 due to the Race For DFL. The latter race would have an impact on my chase to continue lowering my PR, due to the general fatigue from running big miles a week earlier, as well as the lingering right knee IT band soreness that developed that day.
I almost took the sore knee as an excuse to skip the race, particularly after Katie said she was going to pass on it due to her own plantar fasciitis issues. It was tempting to just curl up in bed and sleep in, but she encouraged me to give it a go, so I did.
Though not as cold as the 2019 races, this definitely felt like a winter run. The temperature was 29 degrees, though the sunshine and lack of a breeze made for nice running weather. A field of 90 runners had gathered, which I believe is a record for this race. A mixture of high school cross country runners whose season had ended and folks getting some exercise in before the holiday indulgences joined the core group that shows up to most CVR races. There were a few kids from St. Albans, and I also saw Avery from Montpelier High School, who had won the two or three previous CVR races he had entered.
Given the punishment I took at the Race For DFL I was skeptical about lowering my personal record this time around. (This thought may or may not have been in my mind when I was debating whether to run at all.) To minimize the knee pain I took two ibuprofen an hour before the race started, and drove to the race rather than run a two-mile warmup from the house. I still did a half mile on the track before the start to get the blood flowing.
Rather than simply shooting for 24:13, which would be one second faster than my PR, I set a goal of running a 7:40 pace for this race, which would bring me in under 24:00. I wasn’t sure this was possible, but I figured establishing an ambitious goal was the way for me to run my best time for the day.
At the start things were a little bogged down on the track given the big crowd, and I had to navigate the traffic. I wasn’t thinking this at the time, but it does slow you down in a race where every second might count. I finished the first lap in 1:56, which is a 7:44 pace, and the second in almost the exact same time. Already I was too slow!
On the second lap around the track my old nemesis Unicorn PJs Girl passed me, running at a pretty good clip. She had finished ahead of me in the Autumn Onion costume race three weeks ago, but I had her number in the first Fallen Leaves race two weeks ago. Today would be our rubber match.
Also ahead of me was this guy Scotty, a former bartender at Charlie O’s who charged us too much for tequila one night. I’ve seen him at a couple of races, and if I see him at a couple of more I might just complain to him. We’ve never spoken (outside the bar), though we follow each other on Strava. Scotty is a guy who I know used to run a lot faster than me, but recent results suggest I should be able to compete with him. So I kept him in my sights.
Positions were already getting settled by the time we were on the bike path. I caught up to Unicorn somewhere near the one mile mark. She didn’t want to be passed, and we ran side-by-side for quite a while. I was slightly ahead as we approached another teenage girl. I passed her and Unicorn followed shortly. Soon the high school kids were coming the other way, and the first three were from St. Albans. Avery was in fourth place, but a good distance back. This was not going to be his day.
As we approached the turnaround more and more people were coming the other way. This was a fast race, and I was fairly far back. I shouted encouragement to all the folks I knew, which was a lot of people. I felt like the maitre’d out there with all the “nice jobs” and “keep goings!” When I got to the turn I was only a few seconds ahead of the unicorn.
I felt like I was going as fast as I could, but every time I looked at my watch it was too slow. The first mile was 7:42, which was promising; the second was 7:45, which was less so. A guy came up behind me as we passed the second mile. He had been encouraging all the St. Albans kids, so I figured he was a coach. When we passed mile two he said, “now is the time to start doing those calculations in your head.” I replied, “based on the first two splits I can confidently say we aren’t on pace to break 24:00.”
And we weren’t. I was trying to push the pace, but every time I looked at my watch it was close to an 8:00 pace. And for awhile I wasn’t particularly close to anybody to push me forward. I felt like I had the energy for a push over the last half mile, when we got off the path and back onto the High School lawn, but the frost-covered grass didn’t make for great footing, and the data shows I wasn’t actually gaining speed.
I was, however, gaining on a guy, and that was motivation for me to keep pushing. It turns out it was the same old guy I passed a mile into the first race. I caught and passed him when we hit the track, and then it was a sprint to the finish. I managed to beat him by three seconds. I also managed to fall short of my PR by three seconds.
I am big enough to admit that I was disappointed by this. It’s fun to have a tradition of running faster every time, and this was a fast race that I didn’t feel particularly speedy on. That guy Scotty beat me by 40 seconds, which seems like a lot. Still I beat Unicorn Girl by 14 seconds to win our little battle over the past month. And I have to admit, running my second-fastest ever 5K on a sore knee just a week after running a 50K really doesn’t sound like a failure. It was a pretty good result.
Next up is the New Years Eve 5K, unless I find something else to join over the next few weeks. Though it technically takes place in 2021, it marks the start of the 2022 CVR race season. We will be doing the race series again in 2022, and I look forward to seeing how my stats have improved from 2019.
RACE SUMMARY: Distance: 5K Time: 24:17 (24:22 gun time) Pace: 7:44 (per Strava, which clocked this at longer miles than last time. PR for pace.) Place: 50/90 Age Group: 5/6
This is a race that was not even on my radar – in fact, I had never heard of it – even two months ago. I didn’t decide to enter until three weeks ago. I didn’t have time to implement any sort of training plan. Yet on this Saturday morning, I was at Chesterfield Gorge in Massachusetts at 7 a.m., setting up a tent and trying to get loose in the cool November air to prepare for the 2021 Race for DFL.
Westfield River at Chesterfield Gorge
I wrote previously about the background for me deciding to enter this event. My Runderachieving friend Matt Caldwell originally mentioned the race to me and Darrel Lasell. I knew Matt would be there, but I wasn’t sure about Darrel. As late as Wednesday he was talking about all the things he needed to do around his house, but we could see the FOMO on his face. I figured there was probably a 50% chance that he would be there.
Darrel was there.
Katie also accompanied me to Chesterfield Gorge as part of a fun weekend together in the Berkshires, to staff my aid station and provide moral support. She also signed up for the “fastest single lap” portion of the race, and planned to run a couple laps to get some miles in for herself. Unlike the core race, which requires runners to complete a 4.167-mile lap (a “yard”) every hour until they no longer wish to compete, single-lap race could be run at any hour on Saturday.
This was key, because it gave Katie time to digest our breakfast of Muesli and toast. I was starting with a fairly heavy stomach, which persisted through much of the day.
We were expecting cloudy skies and temperatures getting into the low 50s before rain showers would hit in the afternoon. But instead of cloudy skies, the sun was starting to break through at 8:00 a.m. The air was chilly, but the weather was already better than expected. Soon, 60+ entrants were off.
The course took a tiny little loop back through the small camping/parking area before joining River Road. From there it was approximately 2.08 miles slightly downhill before turning around and heading back.
The downhill was a little less slight than I had expected. We lost quite a bit of elevation in just the first quarter mile. The bigger implication would be the climb up at the end. There were also more rolling hills on the road than I was aware of, meaning the per-lap elevation gain was greater than that of my trial run. The race was run on a dirt road with a lot of rocky/cobbly portions and a number of huge puddles to navigate. It wasn’t super technical, but not not technical, either.
My goal for this race was to run 6-8 laps. Six laps would take me to 25 miles and be my longest-ever run. This would be just a mile and change less than marathon distance, so a seventh lap would reach that, but leave me two miles short of 50 km. Meaning I would need an eighth lap to make this an official Ultramarathon.
Fueling had worked out pretty well on the trial run, and I followed a similar plan this time. I had several peanut butter sandwiches with either jelly or honey, some shot bloks, miso soup, and a gatorade/water combination. I had done some research on the matter, but this was still a lot of guesswork.
I knew this would be a weird event. The victory would go not to the fastest runner, but to the one who could keep running the longest. And to run a long time, one needs to conserve energy. And to conserve energy while running means to not push it going uphill. Still I was surprised when, less than a tenth of a mile in, people started to walk up the gradual incline at the very start. I wanted to run the entire first lap, and I figured others would want to as well. I was incorrect.
There were exceptions to this rule, as some folks were running for the single-lap prize. There was also a guy, who I later learned is named Wouter, who was running double laps (even though only one would count) in order to, I dunno, get as many miles in as he could before it got dark? He wouldn’t win with that strategy. But he put in a lot of miles, hour after hour.
Anyway I was about 1.6 miles into the first lap when Wouter went flying by in the other direction. A few others were a little behind him, and then there was a steady stream coming toward me. This meant that I was near the turnaround, which was marked with a helium-filled Kevlar scarecrow balloon. High-fiving the scarecrow was optional, but I did as I made the turn.
Though I made a couple of friends during the day, I ran the first lap “alone.” I didn’t really speak with anyone, and Matt and Darrel were both doing their own thing. There were some folks who would become recurring characters through much of the day. There was the Fleet Feet Staff woman and the woman with the purple shorts. There was the older guy with glasses and the older guy with the hat. The latter ran with a woman with an acorn tattoo on her arm. During that first lap I jockeyed for position a couple of times with an Asian woman with a red coat. I passed her going uphill, and she passed ahead of me on the flat portion.
My goal was to run each lap in 45-50 minutes to allow for time to hit the porta potty, replenish supplies and have some soup and sandwiches. My first lap, during which I never really walked, I completed in 42:47. That was too fast.
I was still feeling full from breakfast, so I only had a shot blok and gatorade between laps. Lesson learned, I got more serious about not running hard for lap two. I struck up a conversation with a guy named Tyler, who moved to Connecticut from Michigan last spring, and who was getting acclimated to New England races and terrain. His goal for the day was to set a distance PR by running further than 100 km. That would require him to run 16 laps. His day was just getting started.
Toward the end of this lap Darrel caught up to us, then he and I left Travis on a hill as we ran to the finish. Two guys who were walking even on the flat bit at the very end called us overachievers when we jog past them. We noted the irony. This lap took just over 46 minutes, which was more according to plan.
More soup and half a sandwich later, Katie joined us for the third lap. It was fun to have the company, and to be able to show her the ropes that I had learned about the course, namely the best way to get around the giant puddles. It was getting a little warmer, but there was still a cool breeze. I had brought in a change of clothing if long sleeves proved too warm, but this never became a problem. The sun, though dappled, seemed to help dry the course a little bit, which improved the footing over the next few hours. We were appropriately slow and finished in exactly 47 minutes.
I’m not certain at this point what food choices I made. I had miso and gatorade at each break for sodium and electrolyte replenishment, but the sandwiches were already losing their appeal. My stomach felt heavy the entire day, and I don’t know if too much bread was the cause.
Lap four I again ran alone, and I again ran too fast, in a little over 44 minutes. I got behind a guy who I thought was doing a good job by example of reminding me to walk up hills, but his pace in general was a little faster than I wanted for this race. Otherwise there were the usual characters: Fleet Feet, Purple Shorts, Funny Hat and Acorn Tattoo. The Asian woman by now seemed to be running faster than me, but she gave a little smile and wave as we crossed paths.
Lap five I spent some time talking to a guy named Eli. There were a handful of racers from Vermont, and by chance almost all of us had set up shop in the same area of the campground, including Eli. He is an ultra runner from the Mount Ascutney area, whose goal today was to set a distance PR by running more than 100 miles. I thought he was crazy. Crazier still was when he asked me how I was fueling for the race. I told him that I really didn’t know what I was doing.
By this time I was starting to feel this run. Though not incredibly so, the course is more demanding than the one I ran in Montpelier, and the extra hills especially were taking their toll as the miles piled up. I made up a rule that if I finished lap and didn’t want to run any more, I would run the next one and be done. Lap six was a given to get to 25, but the rest I wasn’t sure about. My knee was starting to hurt, and the bottoms of my feet were tired and sore.
I did the fifth lap in 47 minutes, but lap six was much slower at 52 minutes. The breaks had already started to feel short, and this one was extra short. I ran awhile with Matt for the first time on the sixth lap. His original goal had been to run 50 miles, but he was getting tired of racing already and was now thinking of cutting back to 50K, which was four hours less running.
I did not want to run lap seven, so this was to be my last one and I would be joined by Katie. I took a hit of ibuprofen, and also followed Eli’s advice to have some coffee. I actually felt better than I had at lap six, which I am sure was aided by having Katie with me. I started to think that I could start lap eight and run a mile before turning back to get to 50K, though (as Matt reminded me) this would not be an “official” 50K if I did it this way. Another strategy would be to run the first half, then walk/jog back fast enough to get in under an hour. I talked this over with Katie, who was already putting in long miles for herself and had never run 12 in a day before. We both decided that, if I were to do one more lap, we would both do what we needed to do to meet our own needs.
I didn’t make a final decision until Darrel got back and I asked him if he was going to do another. He had really struggled on the sixth lap, but rallied a bit on the seventh, and now responded with a hearty “oh yeah!” He had also set his own distance PR with lap seven, and was on to get his 50K in. I couldn’t be the only one of the three of us to quit now.
Up until this point, we had gotten lucky with the weather. The forecast had predicted rain starting as early as 1:00, but skies had been fairly clear until clouds and wind rolled in on lap seven. Overall, the weather had been ideal for this run. But that was about to come to an end, as the predicted rainfall started at three o’clock, as the remaining 39 runners started the eighth lap. Most of my “crew” was still running.
The rain was fairly gentle at first, but even a little additional moisture caused rapid deterioration of the already-wet road. Footing was getting worse along with the visibility. With my knee barking loudly, I was fully prepared to take it super easy on this lap. Then the thunder started. Maybe we didn’t want to be out there too long after all, though as one guy said when he passed by us, “I don’t know if hanging out in a metal tent is any better.” That was a decent point.
Katie and basically stuck to the plan, walking the uphills and jogging the rest. Katie had been talking about running this lap with me until she needed to walk, then rejoining me on my way back, but she had much more energy than I did and was in fact running ahead of me a lot. She was on her way to setting her own distance PR with little trouble. By the time we reached the finish line, the rain was coming down harder and the wind had picked up.
There was no way any of the Runders were going back out in that, and in fact a quarter of the remaining field dropped out at that point. I saw Tyler at the aid station and asked him if he was going back out. “Hell no!” he said enthusiastically while enjoying a drink. Wouter was done, too, having completed 58 miles for the day, though only 33 counted.
The tradition for this race is to start every lap with the cracking open of a beer, so Darrel and I grabbed a couple and went to join several other people in sending the remaining runners out into the dark. I had been looking forward to this part all day. The temperatures had plummeted and we were wet and frigid while breaking down our tent and repacking the cars. As we were doing this, the first runners of the ninth lap were already plodding back. Some of them were still in the early part of their races.
Three people continued racing from midnight until 8:00 a.m. After results are posted I learned that Eli had indeed met his goal by completing 25 laps and 104 miles. He finished in second place, which in Backyard Ultra parlance means he got the “assist.” The winner had to complete one more lap, and that accomplishment went to a woman named Jennifer Kenty, who happens to be the Asian woman I sparred with for a few moments during the first lap. A brush with Royalty!
One of these people ran 108 miles and won the race. You’ll note that at one point I was half a step ahead of her.
I remember in the summer of 2020 (the first Covid summer) my friend Lauren telling me about finishing races and saying, “I’m never doing that again” afterward. The context of this is that very often time will make you look back more fondly at the event, and perhaps decide that you will try again. This race was not like that for me. Even though it was hard on me physically, I finished thinking I absolutely want to do another backyard ultra, and maybe even a regular ultramarathon.
I really enjoyed the format that doesn’t force participants to run hard, as well as the “choose your own adventure” nature of it. Of the 65 entrants, very few were actually in it to try to win. The rest of us had other goals for the race. But everybody was giving it their best and cheering on the rest of the participants. Even the long haulers at one time had had more modest aspirations.
RACE SUMMARY: Distance: 4.1666 x 8 laps = 33.33 miles Time: 6:20 moving time. (7:51 elapsed time) Pace: 11:24 Overall Finish: DNF (but 35/65) Age Group: N/A
The past few years I have noticed October being unseasonably warm. And also the last few years I have noticed a rapid transition to colder temperatures in November. I remember this most because the Fallen Leaves races have been accompanied by cold temperatures and sometimes snow. The 2019 races in particular featured Arctic weather. The 2020 races were a bit more moderate – in part because they were done virtually and we could therefore wait for things to warm up – but still more winter than fall in character.
So it should not have come as a surprise when the first race of this year was accompanied by sub-freezing temperatures. This was a live race that started at 9:00 a.m., so there was no waiting for the air to warm up. Katie joined me for this race, and she drove the car while I did a little two mile warmup running from the house to the track. The skies were sunny and there was little breeze, so it was a warm 28 degrees at the start.
I got to the Montpelier High School track first and registered us both. The CVR club president, Manny, was handing out bibs. He joked, “you’re sure you’ll remember which is yours?” I assured him I would. “Katie is 159 and I am 160!” I said confidently. Katie showed up and we were pinning on our bibs near the registration table and Manny chided me, “you’re sure you have those right?” I said, “yes! I’m number 160!” and turned to show him that I was pinning on bib number 159. Whoops! I remembered my number, I just didn’t remember to look at which one I had claimed!
Bib snafu corrected, I did another lap around the track to keep warm. At 9:00 we lined up for race instructions. I made a point to move a bit closer to the front of the pack, so as not to get slowed down by other runners. Katie lingered toward the back. It was a good-sized field of 68, and I tried to start in front of those who I knew would be slower than me. There were a lot of the usual speedy people at the front of the pack, including a bunch of high school cross country runners. I stayed behind all of them.
This race starts with 2-plus laps around the Montpelier High School Track before crossing school grounds to the end of the bike path at Bailey Avenue. The track portion serves to space out the field before it hits the narrow path. We then run a mile to the end of the path at Dog River Road, then reverse course to a finish back on the track.
I found I had positioned myself fairly well at the start, and settled into my place pretty early on. I was behind Donna Smyers, but passed her halfway through the first lap. In turn, I was passed by the Unicorn Pajamas girl from the prior week’s Autumn Onion race. I also found myself running beside Mark Howard for a while, as I did at both Berlin Pond and Sodom Pond. This was my peer group, pace-wise, for sure.
This was my seventh running of the Fallen Leaves 5K, and I had run each of the previous six faster than the one before it. The last one in 2020 I ran in 24:34, a 7:55 pace. That stood as my current Personal Record. Because I haven’t been doing a lot of fast running over the last two months I was skeptical I could keep my streak going. But I also figured it was worth it to take a shot at another PR on this course. The start was fast, as I have found typical for this race, but I was pretty comfortably running a 7:45 – 7:55 pace. If I could keep that up, I would be fast enough.
On the second lap Donna moved back in front of me. She had never finished behind me in a race, and I didn’t get the sense she intended to this time. Crossing the lawn there was a kid limping back toward the track. He had pulled a muscle and his race was over. I was behind a couple other kids at this point, but they pulled away from me. Unicorn girl did not pull away, and I actually passed her again on the bike path. This surprised me, as she had been pretty strong a week ago.
After that there wasn’t much jockeying. I passed an older guy sometime after the one mile mark. After that the highlights were the leaders coming back. The first was Neal Graves, who sped by as I was at the 1.5 mile mark. I did some math in my head and figured he was .6 miles ahead of me, so I was going somewhere between 70-75% of his pace. That’s actually an improvement for me.
Soon there was a steady stream of people coming back as I approached the turnaround. Luckily nobody I expected to be in front of. My second mile was just under 7:50, which was pretty much the same as my first mile. I had visions of kicking things up a notch on the way back, but that wasn’t there for me at this time. Still I was mostly in the sub-8:00 range, so still in line to beat my goal.
Around the time we were passing the track on the bike path, this would be at 2.5 miles, I found myself catching up to one of the high school kids, even as I could see some of his teammates crossing the finish line. The temptation was to sprint up and pass him, but I told myself to play it smart and keep a steady pace. Soon I was on him, but he sped up a bit and I held back a little. I felt like it was too soon to get into a race with a kid.
As we got onto the lawn I ran up beside him, and he accelerated again, but this time I pulled ahead. I had the inside line on the curves, which helped me gain a couple of seconds. The grass was still coated in frost and the traction wasn’t the best. This is where I hoped to find some a kick, as we were only about a quarter mile from the end, but it still wasn’t there. We turned onto the track, and I wasn’t sure how much of a lead I had on him, but his teammates were there cheering “Go Greg!” I figured he was close. My body also decided that Greg wasn’t catching me, and I was finally able to find that last gear over the last tenth of a mile. I saw the clock was in the low-24-minute range, and knew I had sealed another PR. It felt good cruising over the finish line at a full sprint.
I went over to the bike path, which abuts the track, to cheer Katie as she went by. I knew she would be a few minutes behind me. I saw a woman who I knew was near the end of the pack, and thought she must have turned around early if she was ahead of Katie now. Then I saw another really slow guy, and I was confused. I had failed to account for the fact that it had taken probably five minutes for me to get to that point to the finish, and that Katie had already passed by. I turned to look at the track and saw Merril Creagh reaching the finish. She had been a little in front of Katie. And then I saw Katie coming down the track. I had just enough time to run over to the finish line and get some photos of her coming down the home stretch.
This was another fun race, and it was good to exceed expectations. My splits were very consistent: 7:49, 7:47, 7:49 (and 7:01 for the last .11). That said, I did find it a little frustrating to not be able to push harder until the very end. I recognize that I was running fast for a longer distance than normal, but I was also hoping that all the long runs would give me the stamina to dig down a little further back. Perhaps the two-mile warmup was a bit too long for that? The only way to find out is to keep working at it.
Today was a good day for a car run. “Car run” is a term that I just made up, meaning you’re already in the car so you might as well take the opportunity to drive somewhere different for a run. Since I work from home, I’m not in the car all that much, so most of my runs are “home runs.” I obviously didn’t make up that term, and I doubt it will catch on.
Anyway, I was in the car to get some maple syrup from Morse Farm. (Buy in bulk and save big $$!) I had Calais on the mind because a few weeks ago Katie and I hiked up to Chickering Bog, and on the way back explored some sweet little trails on the other side of the VAST trail in, and I’ve wanted to explore them more fully. Then I remembered that it’s hunting season in Vermont, and though I have a bright orange shirt I thought it prudent to not go traipsing around unfamiliar woods by myself.
But I still wanted to go to Calais. I’ve done a number of runs up there, mostly centered around Adamant, including the Adamant Half Marathon and Sodom Pond Four Mile race. But there is much more to Calais than Adamant, including Maple Corner (“where the pavement ends”) and Kent Corner. I’ve been to Maple Corner, home of the Whammy Bar, but not anything else in that part of town.
Not knowing much about the roads and distances, I took to Strava in the morning to try to design an appropriate route. I decided on a loop that would start at Maple Corner, run down County Road (getting the worst part out of the way early) to Bliss Pond Road, up on Old West Church Road through Kents Corner, continuing on to Robinson Cemetery Road, and then looping back on West County Road. This would be about 5.7 miles, which seemed like the right distance for today.
I got to Maple Corner a little before 3:00. I was a bit dismayed by how cold it was – only 40 degrees – but the sun was out (mostly) and I figured it would be good for running. Plus, the oncoming cold is unavoidable, so I might as well try to acclimate now. After warming up, I was off into the Southwestern sun on County Road.
At the very start there is a short downhill from the Maple Corner Community Center, where I had parked. After a tenth of a mile, though, starts a pretty decent climb of 130 feet or so. Usually a prefer more of a warmup before starting a climb, but this wasn’t too bad.
What was bad were the cars – work trucks mostly – that were zooming by at what seemed too high a rate of speed. Then I remembered that the speed limit was 50 miles per hour, and that I had indeed chosen to start on this stretch to be done with it early. Luckily there wasn’t a steady stream of cars.
After the climb, the road continues as rolling hills. Once I settled in everything was fine. There was a huge skeleton at the end of a driveway. It was probably ten feet tall, much larger than a human. Obviously a Sasquatch.
Definitive evidence
A little less than two miles into the run was the turn to Bliss Pond Road. I’ve run this road a few times, either in the Adamant Half Marathon or training for it, but in the other direction. The other direction involves a lot of uphill, which naturally means this way is mostly downhill. It’s nicer going that way! Instead of sucking air I was able to enjoy the scenery. And the scenery is gorgeous. Bliss Pond itself was incredibly calm and reflected the cloud-dappled sky and later-fall trees.
The .8 miles on Bliss was the only road familiar to me. Soon I came to the left-hand turn on to Old West Church Road. This seems like the ritzy part of Calais, with big estate-like farm houses, and the gorgeous church. Just before the church I came to the trailhead for some of the Calais town trails. The loops were fairly short, less than two miles, so I started into the forest to check it out. After a short time I remembered the hunting thing, and also that I was not wearing trail-ready shoes. I decided to turn back and resume on Old West Church.
Bliss
OWC road features more rolling hills, vistas, and some gorgeous late fall foliage. After the church there is a descent to Kents Corner. There was a crew running power lines near the corner. Kents Corner itself is a cute little crossroads highlighted by the Kent Museum, which is reputedly very nice but also open only one month out of the year. This is not that month.
At this point I could have taken a left and headed back to Maple Corner on Kent Hill Road, which would have made this run slightly shorter than five miles. I continued on to Robinson Cemetery Road. The first highlight of this road is the Robinson Sawmill, another museum site next to a little pond. A little further up the road was the Robinson Cemetery, also a lovely open space on the top of the hill. Somewhere along the way there was a sign for another trail system, this apparently on open land. More to explore in the future.
After a bit there I came across Apple Hill Road on the right. It looked perfectly charming, but I didn’t know where it went and there wasn’t any Internet access to check the map, so I also put that in the “future” file. Then I arrived at the intersection with West County Road. This is the same road that I started on, but the name changed in Maple Corner when it turned to gravel. Only three cars passed me on this stretch, but all arrived at the exact same time, so there was a moment of gridlock as they made room for each other to pass me.
Finally I was back at Maple Corner. My watch said I was at 5.8 miles, and I decided I’d rather it say 6.2, which is 10K. I turned on to the Worcester/Calais Road, which here in Calais they just call the Worcester Road, and ran .2 miles to the Curtis Pond swimming area before turning around and finishing at the car.
This was about as perfect a run as I’ve ever had. I felt great, the weather was wonderful and the scenery was just fabulous. I love living in town Montpelier, but I certainly understand why someone would want to live in Calais. It’s beautiful out there!
RUN STATISTICS: Distance/Elevation/Time: 6.2 miles/592 Feet/1:01:21 Weather: 40 degrees and partly cloudy. Ponds/Cemeteries: 3/2 Sasquatch Remains: one large skeleton Traffic jams: one Other runners seen: Zero Overall Rating: 10/10. I can’t imagine it getting much better.
There are races that you do to race, and there are races you do for fun. And while in some “fun” races you try to be competitive, others are really best considered as nothing but fun.
A Halloween 5K in costumes? In the pouring rain? I mean, if you can’t let your competitive spirit take a back seat for a race like that, there’s no such thing as a “fun” race.
This was a fun race.
Stay Thirsty My Friends
Admittedly, it wasn’t feeling like it was going to be fun when Katie and I were looking at the forecast of mid-50’s and 100% chance of rain. We’re going to get up early on a Sunday morning for that? Katie had a semi-formed idea of wearing a disco costume, but didn’t want to do that in the rain. I, having realized last winter after growing a beard that I look a lot like The Most Interesting Man In The World, was planning to to as The Most Interesting Man In The World. But I wasn’t loving the idea of wearing a good blazer in a rain storm.
Cue, then, a trip to the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Barre. My Plan B was to get a cheap blazer that I didn’t care about ruining in the rain. Katie’s idea was a bit more elaborate: she wanted to wear her red rain poncho, and we decided that we could fashion a jagged green collar to turn it in to a tomato costume. Our trip was successful. We found a green jester’s collar that would be perfect for Katie, and a $15 navy blazer (that, to be honest, might be nicer than the one I already own) for TMIMITW.
Then there was the matter of the beer. TMIMITW is known for drinking Dos Equis. I, however, am not. After leaving the thrift store we hit up the Beverage Baron. I had a brief moment of alarm when I couldn’t find my beer of choice. Finally I found 12-pack bottles at the bottom of a rack. After briefly balking because I didn’t really want twelve bottles of Dos Equis, I realized I had to buy them for the sake of my art. Plus it was only ten bucks.
Also for the sake of my art, I had to decide how to carry the bottle. I thought about using a handheld bottle carrier, because I thought it would be funny, but the bottle didn’t fit. I resigned myself to carrying it in my hand, but thought it would be cold and slippery after being in the refrigerator. Plus I would be tempted to drink it after the race, because that would be cool, but it would be all shaken up and foamy.
Finally I realized that I could actually drink a bottle the night before and carry an empty. So that’s what we did. (Katie also drank a bottle to ensure I’d have a backup. Just in case.)
Since we hadn’t pre-registered, our plan was to get to Onion River Outdoors sometime between 8:00 and 8:30 on Sunday morning. We arrived at 8:15 and were grateful that registration and pre-race hanging out were inside the otherwise closed store. We chatted with a few CVR friends, but really didn’t recognize most of the racers. We marveled at a few costumes. One woman cut the bottom out of a laundry basket and went as a laundry basket. One woman strapped orange cones to her body and went as a construction site. Most impressive(?)ly, a person made a huge squid out of cardboard and wore it over his head.
Soon enough we were outside for the start. The field of 37 runners was both relatively small and impressively large for the conditions. The race was to be mostly on Elm Street, with a turn on to Cummings and then a jaunt out on the North Branch trail before turning around and returning to ORO. Since staffing issues meant no police presence, we were asked to stay on the sidewalk along Elm Street.
Just as we went out for instructions, I noticed a woman doing some pre-race stretching. Hey! That might have been a good idea! I do stretch before pretty much every run. But at this point it was too late. I would be starting this race cold.
I really felt that at the start. I got out fairly fast, because that’s what happens in a race, but it did not feel good at all. Legs were sluggish and lungs were all, “what? We’re running now?” But I’ve been doing this long enough now that I know my body will come around.
We started toward the back of the pack, but the field sorted out pretty quickly. For a bit I was running behind the woman dressed as a wedding gift, but I got past her. Then I was behind my friend Manny, but I got past him as well. Unfortunately I cut him off a little as I was simultaneously dodging puddles and trying to get out of the way of a car. This was all early in the race, alongside the Meadow neighborhood.
People liked my costume. As I crossed Elm Street when the sidewalk switched sides, the course monitor yelled “it’s the World’s Most Interesting Man! I love it!” Soon I was catching up on the laundry basket, and I passed her shortly after we turned on to Cummings Street.
I wasn’t in a crowd as we hit the double track trail in North Branch. I was pushing myself at this point. It was a fun run but, you know, those competitive juices never go away. I heard some footsteps behind me and thought Laundry Basket was pushing me, but it was a young woman in some unicorn pajamas. The race was on!
The race wasn’t really on. By now I was feeling pretty good, and having fun dodging puddles and finding lines, but I knew she was going to pass me sooner or later. It was actually later than I expected. As we reached the turnaround and started to head back, she was close on my tail. Laundry basket was surprisingly far behind me, and the rest of the field still further back. I gave a high five to the Worlds Cutest Tomato as we passed each other. Eventually the Unicorn made her move and passed me just as we were getting back to Cummings Street, with maybe a mile to go.
I looked back and saw nobody. Basically my choice now was to either try to stick with Unicorn and hope to regain my position at the finish, or to use her as sort of a pacer but otherwise just run. It was pouring rain, I was dodging puddles by running on to saturated lawns. Moreover, I was wearing a suit and carrying an empty Dos Equis bottle. There wasn’t going to be a personal record at the end. Also, there weren’t going to be age categories, as prizes were geared more toward costumes than running times.
So I just went the fun run route the rest of the way. Mostly. Unicorn and I approached a boy of maybe 12 running ahead of us as we approached the end. Unicorn made the pass and I was thinking about making a push. But the kid looked back and saw me, and it turned out he had as much juice in the tank as I did. By the time we got back to Langdon Street there was no hope to catch him. Instead I noticed a photographer at the finish line, and I decided to mug for her instead.
As it turns out, I finished in an official time of 25:50, which was pretty good given the circumstances: only 1:15 off my personal 5K record. I was 16th out of 37 entries, so solidly middle of the pack. And, most importantly, I won the prize for Funniest Costume for my perfect Most Interesting Man in the World impression. This was definitely worth getting out of bed for!
When I first started running, it was pretty much a solitary endeavor. While others may have inspired me to, for example, sign up for my first race or two, I for the most part was doing the actual running on my own.
This changed in the second half of 2019 when I started joining CVR Tuesday night fun runs. Here I met dedicated members of the club, many of whom had been running for decades. And I discovered that, in addition to loving to run, these people loved to talk about running. About racing. About training. About group runs. About other runners they know.
By the time the Fallen Leaves series came around in late fall, I had made a few friends, and they were talking about other group running events they were involved with. Runderachievers in Northfield on Wednesday evenings. Winter long runs on Saturday mornings. During the first part of the Covid shutdowns, I ran a lot with my coworker Lauren. Whereas the Tuesday night group was largely street runners, I now found myself associated with trail runners and ultra runners.
I wasn’t a trail runner. No – I wasn’t going to bea trail runner. But then I was running East Montpelier trails and Hubbard Park with Lauren. Then, with no brewery to finish at, I was running up Paine Mountain with the Runders. And I honestly was enjoying the woods for the quiet and the nature and the respite from the summer sun. In the meantime, I was also building mileage because I was committed to running some half marathons.
The mileage that the ultra runners talked about seemed comical. 25K sounded ridiculously long until I realized it was 15 miles. I could do that. But 50K? 50 miles? 100K? That was nonsense. But these people were doing it, and talking about it, and I was listening. The mileage was dumb, but they were going to cool places and (for the most part) having fun.
This spring I signed up for the Infinitus 8-mile race, just to try it out. It was quite a scene to be surrounded by all these extreme athletes. The race itself was fun, but not as much of a physical challenge as I had expected. A few weeks later Katie and I went to the GunstockTrailfest and did back-to-back 10Ks. I even considered for a minute entering the 30K before I thought better of it.
Now we were ramping up. Katie was interested in running longer trail races, and I wanted to be there with her. We hoped to run the Moosalamoo 14-miler, but that sold out before we could register. Never mind that, we would do the 15-miler at Groton. But then we both got injured and missed that race, too.
My broken arm blew up my fall race season for awhile, but it didn’t actually disrupt my mileage for more than a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, everybody else was running their races, and I was getting jealous.
I was getting jealous of other people’s races. I’m going to let that thought linger for a moment. This is not somewhere I envisioned being just three years ago.
But back to the story: a few weeks ago at Runderachievers, Matt mentioned that the DFL race organizer was trying to gauge peoples’ interest in bringing it back this year, and would Darrel and I be interested in filling out a survey if Matt shared it with us. He mentioned this as if we would automatically know what he was talking about. I don’t know if Darrel understood; I certainly didn’t.
The DFL race, as it turns out, is the Race For DFL. This is a backyard ultra (a term that was unfamiliar to me), last man standing (ditto) race, to be held (probably) at the Chesterfield Gorge in Western Massachusetts.
Terminology: “backyard ultra” refers to an ultramarathon that is run as multiple laps over a short (4.167-mile) course. One lap is run every hour, with any time between the finish of one lap and the start of the next lap used for rest, recovery, and refueling. The race continues until only one person lines up to start a lap. This person is the “last man standing.”
DFL is short for “dead freaking last.” At least that’s what the race website says. Pretty much everybody understands the “F” to stand for a different word. And usually finishing DFL in a race is a bad thing.
If all this seems convoluted, even a bit twisted, it’s because it was all dreamed up by Lazarus Lake, the man behind the crazy Barkley Marathons.
But back to the story. (Laz is not affiliated with this Race for DFL (R4DFL), other than inspiring the genre.) This, of course, is a dumb idea that I would never be interested in, outside of the fact that I missed all my other long races. The timing of this race was mid-November, by which time my arm should be fully healed. And the format is intriguing: an hour is plenty of time to finish 4.167 miles, with ample time to take on fuel. The Chesterfield Gorge course is on gravel road, so nothing technical and pretty flat. It would be an opportunity to pile up some low-risk miles. And the $40 entry fee is quite manageable.
But is the format something I would actually enjoy? It would be hell for Lauren, who hates flat, hates out-and-back courses, and hates repetition in general. But I’m not Lauren. So I decided that before I would commit to the race, I would do a trial run. As it turns out, the Siboinebi Path, including the to-be-finished portion leading out Power Plant Road to the new bridge (just beyond the hydro dam), is exactly two miles starting from where the traveled portion of Old Country Club Road ends. So a four-mile round trip. The parking area at the start sounded like an ideal place to park the car for my between-laps aid station.
Last Friday I decided to take the plunge. My plan was to aim for five laps, but to judge how things felt as I went along, as four laps alone would exceed my longest run to date. My other plan was to start at 8:00 a.m., to mimic the R4DFL. But staying up too late on Thursday turned that into a 9:00 a.m. goal. So at 10:00, I was lined up and ready to go.
I had done some research on fueling during a long run, and my plan was to combine shot bloks with peanut butter sandwiches and miso soup. I had coffee and an electrolyte drink to go along with water. I also brought some salt sticks in case of cramping, though with mid-50’s temperatures and cloudy skies, I hoped that would not be an issue. I was most concerned with my right knee, which had been bothering on recent runs, and to a lesser extent my left Achilles, which has been a general background issue for most of the year. Following a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee I would eat a shot blok at the first lap turnaround.
To my surprise, my knee did not bother when I started. I was wearing my snuggest knee wrap for the occasion, and there was no hint of pain. I did have a little tightness in my calves at the start, but that dissipated after a few minutes. The course is flat gravel road for about 3/10 of a mile before going uphill and crossing railroad tracks. The path is paved starting here, which continues to the end of the path onto Gallison Hill Road, a total of 8/10 mile. Then it veers onto the unpaved Power Plant Road, which gains elevation steadily but indiscernibly.
I got to the end, found a place to pee, and then had my shot blok for the run back. My goal was 10- to 11-minute miles, and I was moving on the fast end of that. I returned to base camp in 40:33. That left me close to 20 minutes to fuel up. I had half a peanut butter and honey sandwich, some electrolyte drink, and some miso soup. I also popped an ibuprofen. I was going to load up on that in order to keep pain at bay. Caffeine is also supposed to help with pain tolerance, so I swigged some coffee.
The break felt a little long, given the breeze cooling me off. I wanted to sit and rest, but also to move to stay warm. I was thankful for the start of the second lap. I would try to go slower, both to conserve energy and to shorten the break. The drill was the same for lap two, pee and shot blok at the turnaround. (Not much activity at the end of the trail, so it was a good place to drop trou.) Also the same drill, with a little leg muscle pain at the start that went away within the first mile. Lap two clocked in at 42:00. Not bad.
The routine during the break was the same, except substitute jelly for honey on the half peanut butter sandwich. I also had half a Bobos bar for some carbs and protein. Back on the course, my right calf was starting to bother, and it lingered longer than the previous issues. I was concerned/paranoid about cramps developing, so a the turnaround I had a couple of salt sticks along with the shot blok after I peed. My bathroom break was cut short this time by a car that drove up to the power plant. There was simultaneously not a lot of activity on this road and more than I expected.
Lap three was 41:05. Still faster than the plan, but my pace felt good and I certainly didn’t feel like I was pushing myself. PBH, Bobos, miso soup, coffee and electrolytes at the stop again. I had been texting Katie with every lap, and said lap four was the one that had me most concerned, as it would take me to sixteen miles. Anything more than 13 was mostly uncharted territory.
Still I felt good. Actually, that’s not entirely true. My legs, heart and lungs felt good, but my stomach felt full. In all my concern for taking in enough nutrition, it seemed I had eaten too much. At the turnaround I skipped the post-pee shot blok. Finally, after about 2.5 – 3 miles of this lap, my legs started to feel a bit sore and tired. The only surprise was that it took so long to get to this point. But I finished in 40:18, my fastest leg yet.
The soreness in my legs certainly wasn’t enough to keep me from starting a fifth lap. In fact, I was feeling like a sixth lap was possible. But I decided against that, as I was already going into uncharted territory for miles, and a big increase is an invitation to injury. I finished my last half sandwich at the break, had some more miso, and was ready to go.
I was excited to be feeling so strong at this point. I was actually pretty amped, and started the lap at a fast pace. I decided to go with it and try to make this my fastest lap yet. Worst-case scenario I figured would be to hit a wall and have to walk/jog to the finish, but I figured I’d easily beat 60 minutes. I didn’t have any reason to conserve energy now.
I ran both of the two out miles, which gain elevation, in 9:30. If I could average 9:00 on the way back in, I’d finish in 37:00, which felt really darned respectable at this point of the day. The second-half soreness from the previous lap returned, but I vowed to push through that as well. Mile 19 clicked in at 9:08, my fastest yet, and I managed a kick at the end of mile 20, which I ran in 8:58. My time for the last lap was 37:07.
My moving time for the race was 3:21, or just over a 10-minute mile pace. (Total time was 4:32 – I actually started the first lap at 10:05.) At the end I felt really good. Surprisingly good. Good enough to run/hike six miles with Katie the next day.
This run felt like a game changer to me. All of a sudden I feel much stronger and much more efficient in running, and I believe these longer distances are attainable. (By “longer distance” I mean 26 miles for a marathon or 50K for an ultra. I do not mean 100 miles – that’s still crazy.) It’s like my body is more attuned to slower, longer distances, and I am just now discovering this.
So I am now signed up for the Race for DFL in November, with the plan to go six or seven laps and push my boundaries further. I’m certainly not competing to be DFL for this race, but seeking out my own limits. And I expect it to be fun.
Over this past weekend, I had friends who: ran a half marathon, ran a full marathon, ran a 50K ultramarathon, and ran a ridiculous 100-mile race. I had a friend who ran a five-plus mile race, but it went up an 1,100-foot mountain twice, the day before running the same race I did.
The race I ran was a very flat four-mile run with free beer at the finish line.
Suffice it to say, the race I ran had the most competition.
This was the third live running of the Heady Trotter, the only Vermont entry in the Great American Brewery Runs series. (An appealing concept, though most of the races are 5K in length, which may not justify a six-hour drive to Pennsylvania.) Katie and I signed up to participate last year, though that was canceled due to COVID-19 and turned into a virtual race. (We did that at Sodom Pond, but I didn’t run it “competitively,” so didn’t write a race report.)
This was by far the biggest race I’ve participated in since the start of the pandemic. Capacity was reduced by 40%, but there were still over 1,500 entrants. We were separated into three corrals to reduce crowding at the start, but that still meant 400+ people in each wave, even with a bunch of no-shows. Katie and I are vaccinated, and risk of transmission outdoors is very low, but still we wore masks at the start line. The vast majority of runners did not.
A few hundred folks in the corral
I was lucky enough to be in Corral 1, which Katie was assigned to #2. Since overall race winners were determined by who crossed the finish line first, all the fast runners were in the first corral. All other placement and awards were to be determined by the chips in our bibs. Since I was in no danger of winning this race, I settled in toward the back of the crowd.
The course is a lollipop that starts at the Alchemist brewery, the home of Heady Topper, one of the best-rated beers in the world. After leaving the parking lot, the course hairpins back through the Stoweflake Resort, then turns left on to Cape Cod Road for a three-mile loop. It turns right onto Weeks Hill Road, then onto the Stowe recreation path for a mile and a half back to Cape Cod Road, which it follows for a short distance before returning through the Stoweflake and reaching the finish.
Because I’ve been injured and not training for races, I was planning to treat this more as a four-mile fun run. But as race day approached I realized that, if a bib and a clock were involved, I was going to be competitive. So I did a little research on the course and decided that it would be reasonable to set a faster goal than my Sodom Pond time of 33:34. There would be much less elevation gain, but I had also heard that traffic could be a problem. I settled on a goal of 33 minutes, but would try to set myself up for 32:00 if everything went well. That’s an 8:00/mile pace, which is ambitious for me over four miles, but “nothing ventured, nothing gained” they say.
Things went well enough at the start. With 500 people in the corral things were a little slow, but people began to spread out when we turned to go through the resort. It’s a gravel road, and there were several potholes filled with rain to dodge. Given that I started toward the back of my corral, I was doing more passing than being passed while the group sorted out, which felt good. I was monitoring my watch, and my pace was generally 7:50 – 7:55. It was too early to be thinking about my finishing time, but the course goes slightly downhill at the start, and this felt about right. My watch clicked at 7:57 for the first mile. I was running tangents and not elongating the distance. So far so good.
The interesting thing about being in such a big race, especially over a short distance, is that you never really find your people – the folks you’ll be spending the race with. You’re going along, and the person in front of you is going just a little too slow and you pass them. Meanwhile, you are going just a little too slow for someone behind you, and they pass you. You might never see each other again.
There were a couple of people I was hanging with. One a very short woman with a determined stride, and a guy with a “Muscle and Hustle” shirt. We weren’t really running together, but both were usually in view.
So things were kind of cruising along like that as we turned on to Weeks Hill Road. Shortly before the two-mile mark we turned on to the recreation path. The path is much narrower than the road, and though runners were spread out by now, things did get more congested. Though I was still passing people, and mile two clocked in at 7:59, the pace slowed down. At one point I noticed a different tone coming with each breath. Was something going on with my lungs? I held my breath long enough to realize that the higher pitch was coming from the woman in front of me, whose breathing was perfectly in synch with mine. I passed her and after a few minutes couldn’t hear her any more.
It turns out that my people were fairly competitive. At some point on the rec path I passed both the short woman and Muscle and Hustle, but both passed me back when they got a chance. We went like that for awhile. But by now we were going back uphill, gradual though it was, and I was definitely feeling it. Every time I looked at my watch I was running 8:20, 8:30. I figured I would be able to dig deep for some speed at the end, but 32:00 wasn’t looking all that good.
Mile three buzzed at 8:16, which confirmed my fears that 32:00 was lost. No way I was running the last mile in 7:50. Short woman and M&H both got ahead and started pulling away. As I approached Stoweflake I caught up with a woman and red and passed her. My goal now was to keep that lead. On the gravel road I also approached a racer in a wheel chair. This last stretch, slightly uphill and on gravel, was undoubtedly the most difficult part of the race for him. A friend along the route cheered him on, then said “go Red Sox!” He yelled back, “fuck the Red Sox! Fuck those assholes!” Then a little kid started crying, and he found himself apologizing for his language. Yes, he was a Yankees fan.
I was sagging at the start of the last mile, but with a half mile to go I was able to muster a little – but not a lot – more speed. I was hoping to pull something out with a quarter mile left, but it wasn’t really there yet. I got a little extra juice when I hit the pavement with about .1 to go, but the woman in red sprinted past me like she was just starting her race. I chased her but couldn’t catch up. I could see the clock now. It read 32:30. I was going to beat 33:00 for sure, and I knew my bib time was 10-15 seconds faster than the clock, so I gave it whatever I had left. At the finish, my watch had me at 32:32, though my official time was a second slower. This was a full minute ahead of my Sodom Pond race.
I jogged over to the bag check to get my backpack, which had water and warmer clothes. Then I went to wait for Katie at the finish line. Soon I realized that I could go over to the Stoweflake road and catch her running up there, then cut back to the parking lot and see her at the finish. So that’s what I did. Katie was looking good as she came up the gravel road, and she had a nice strong kick to finish in just over 38 minutes, which was terrific given how little she had been running recently as she recovered from injuries.
I’ll admit to being mildly disappointed at not having a stronger finish to this race, but objectively this was probably the best race I’ve had yet. In a big field, I was 204th of 1,265 finishers, or about the 84th percentile. I was 10th of 50 in the 55-59 age group; 26th of 122 if you expand to 50-59. Both are very respectable. More than respectable: I’ve never achieved such high rankings in a race before. So with time to reflect, I am very pleased with this. And there was delicious beer at the end!
RACE SUMMARY: Distance: 4 miles Time: 32:33 Pace: 8:06 Overall Finish: 204/1,265 Age Group: 10/50
Today is a Federal holiday. Once named for a pretty rotten European man who supposedly “discovered” the Americas, it is now known in Vermont (and a few other places) as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This day is now meant to honor the original inhabitants of our land, from whom it was stolen.
This is a lower-key holiday, one that isn’t associated with gatherings of family or friends. As such, it’s a perfect opportunity to invest more time in a run. Today I figured was a good time 8 miles, plus-or-minus. To honor the day I decided to run the Siboinebi Path, which is the multi-use path through Montpelier that was renamed after the extention was opened in 2019. Siboinebi is the Abenaki word for “river water,” which is apt for a path that runs along the Winooski for almost its entire length.
You may remember the Siboinebi path from such posts as Double Full Monty and Another Double Full Monty. At this blog, we refer to running the length of the trail as a “Full Monty,” as most people call the trail the Montpelier Bike Path. A Double Full Monty (“Double Full” for short) is an out-and-back for the full length.
As you noticed when you clicked the above links, my tradition is to run a Double Full on Veteran’s Day. Today I was okay just running the path once, though the endpoints pretty much necessitate some retracing unless I wanted this to be a much longer, much hillier run. I did not want that.
My route started at my house. I cut across the river and through the condos on Franklin Street, then up Liberty to Hubbard, over the hill and down to Barre St. From there I headed out to the East end of the path. Then I turned around and did the east-west Full Monty. Then returned and scooted home around the Capitol and through the Meadow.
It was pretty quiet this morning, and I didn’t come across a ton of people. I passed a couple of walkers on the path heading out Barre Street. When I crossed the railroad tracks I looked over my shoulder and noticed a fellow runner a little way behind me. There was a car with Maine plates parked on the Old Country Club Road portion of the path, and I made a game of it to try to guess who the fellow Mainer was. At the entry to the “no motor vehicles” portion I saw a tiny pink Croc perched on a rock. I wondered if the owner (or the owner’s parents) would know to retrace their steps on the path to find the missing shoe.
I saw a couple of pedestrians, but neither gave a strong “Maine” vibe. These things are difficult to tell just by running by a person. When the path re-crossed the railroad tracks I looked over my shoulder again, and the runner had gained on me. So now it was going to be a race! The path goes uphill for a few hundred feet, then has a nice cruising downhill. At the top of the hill there was a sign that said “turn around; 2.5 km.” I told the sign I wasn’t going to turn around, and kept going.
This was by no means a speed run – my pace was just a little under 10-minute miles – but I felt strong at this point. Alas, runner woman continued to gain on me, and passed me on the flats along Route 2. She said hi, but I didn’t recognize her. Soon we got to the turnaround, but she continued on Gallison Hill Road. Good on her for tackling that hill, if indeed that’s what she was going to do next.
The path is 3.7 miles long, and I was at 3.3 miles, so it would be seven miles to the other end. It was at this point that I remembered that I hadn’t been accounting for the “and back” miles on the old part of the bike path. So this was going to be closer to ten miles. My longest run since before the broken arm had been 8 miles, so I’d be extending that. I sort of regretted not bringing some nutrition along, as it’s really helpful if I’m running much more than an hour.
As I mentioned above, I wasn’t running all that fast to begin with, but my body now eased into Long Slow Distance (LSD) mode, with paces in the 10:20 – 10:30 range. I started to feel the miles in my joints and muscles, but my heart and lungs weren’t being taxed at this pace, so it was okay going.
There was a mini jack-o’-lantern sitting on a park bench on Stone Cutters Way, and a couple medium-sized ones on the bridge abutments as the path crosses the river near the credit union. Both spots are hangouts for the local homeless population, and I wondered if that community was decorating for the holidays.
This summer, the Montpelier Youth Conservation Corps removed a lot of invasive buckthorn that was growing along the path. There was a sign along the path explaining the work, which I stopped to read. The stumps had been treated (probably with Round Up) and were covered with plastic bags. There are a lot of bags, and the views to the river are opened quite a bit for the work done.
The plod back was uneventful. I had to run a short distance past the house to get to an even ten miles. It was nice to have gotten some low-investment miles as I try to build back my fitness for longer races, though none of those are on the calendar at the moment.
RUN STATISTICS: Distance/Elevation/Time: 10.00 miles/226 Feet/1:41:38 Weather: 57degrees. Some humidity, but pretty ideal. Races Lost: One Jack-o’-lanterns: three Other runners seen: One (see above) Overall Rating: 7/10. Points deducted for lack of excitement
In starting this post, I feel like I am remiss in writing a race recap without having given a training update for a few weeks. Nevertheless, this is where we are. It turns out that it’s easier to run with a broken wrist than it is to type.
My last post was nearly a month ago, and at that time there were a lot of questions in the air about the upcoming race schedule. No, I did not run the Groton Forest race. No, I did not go to Maine for the Flight Deck half marathon (or even the 5K). No, I did not run the Leaf Peepers half marathon (or even the 5K).
But yes, after I had the cast put on, I was able to resume running. At first I took some baby steps with short runs. I was trying to avoid running too much in the humidity, because sweat = stinky cast. And I had to stay out of the rain, because water = ruined cast. At first the jarring of running caused some soreness with the break, and it took some time getting used to how the cast rubbed on wrist bones and the like. After a few runs I was able to comfortably run four or five miles at a time.
The Sodom Pond race was scheduled for September 22. That’s a Wednesday, which is usually Runderachievers night. The core Runders were all planning on running this race, and since I was probably going to run four miles one way or another that day, the weather was good, and it only cost ten dollars, so I decided to join them.
Them and several other friends. This is a CVR race after all. I see most of these people frequently, but there’s something different about getting together for a race. A fun run can sometimes have a plan behind it, but a race usually has a goal, which his different.
Which makes it ironic, I suppose, that I came into this race without a real goal. It makes sense, though, because my training had been upended. My runs in recent weeks were about maintaining some level of fitness without overdoing it and risking injury. Preparing to run fast in a race didn’t come to mind.
Still, I couldn’t go too long without thinking of some sort of goal. In 2019 I ran in slightly slower than a 9-minute mile pace, which seems super slow these days, so I figured I could do better than that. In 2020 I got in just under 34:00, which is slightly faster than 8:30. Since I hadn’t been doing anything close to that for weeks, that seemed like a stretch. Even so I figured I would aim for that and be okay if I finished under 35 minutes.
Similar to Berlin Pond, this race starts out uphill for the first mile, goes downhill for the second mile, then is flat/slightly uphill the two miles back. In 2020 I had done the first mile in 9:13, the second in 8:00, and the last two in just under 8:30. If I could ballpark that I would be okay.
The 2020 race was just six of us from Runders, but this time there were many more people moving me along. Things sorted out shortly, and I found myself again running uphill with Mark Howard. As with Berlin Pond, I figured I would stick with him through the downhill and then get left behind on the flats.
I also found myself just behind another friend, Shannon Salembier, and her friends. I know Shannon to be slightly faster than me – she beat me by a little over a minute at Bear Swamp – so I figured I could use her as a rabbit for as long as I could keep up with her. There would be no harm in pushing things for as long as possible, as I was pretty confident that hitting a wall wasn’t a huge risk at this distance. I would get to the end in any event.
I felt good at the start and figured I was doing okay, but I was still surprised when mile one clicked in at 8:58. Mile 2 featured the big downhill, and I am fast on downhills, so I took advantage of that. Mark had already dusted me but I passed Shannon and friends, and even Donna Smyers, on the downhill. I didn’t know if I would be able to sustain a lead, but I was now determined to push for it.
Mile two was done in 7:43, also quite a bit faster than last year. I was making good time! The course turned on to Sodom Pond Road soon after. Darrel and Cheryl Lasell were attending the water station, but I passed on by. Soon thereafter I felt a thrashing on my left foot. My shoe had come untied, just as it had at Bear Swamp. (The same shoes no less!) In that race I was in the final kick, but this time I decided that two miles was too far to go with a loose shoe. I made the difficult decision to stop and retie. It was difficult to do quickly with a cast on, and Donna, Shannon and one of her friends (her name is Leslie) passed me. I lost (only?) ten seconds, which I would not be able to recover.
This was a setback, but I decided I could still try to keep pace with those ahead of me. Mark was too far ahead, as was Donna, but Shannon and Leslie were close enough to motivate me to stay close, though I didn’t mange to gain any ground on them. As I approached the finish, I could see that I was going to be close to 33:30. I would easily beat my 2020 time after all. I couldn’t get there quite that fast, but crossed at 33:33 by my watch (the timers had me one second slower), which was a full 20 seconds faster than last year.
There’s probably some hidden meaning in all this. Or not so hidden – marathon training calls for two or three weeks of tapering to get ready for the big race, and my injury-induced reduction in miles was not unlike a taper. It perhaps turns out that rest is beneficial even for the short races. There is so much still to learn!
RACE SUMMARY: Distance: 4 miles Time: 33:34 Pace: 8:23 Overall Finish: 22/40 Age Group: 3/5
For someone who is supposed to be training for a 15-mile trail run in three weeks and a half marathon two weeks after that, my planning isn’t always ideal. Sometimes this is impacted by things outside of my control, like weather and other obligations – in my case, my baseball team’s schedule.
On September 11 I am signed up for the Groton Forest Trail Run. There are three distances: 10K, marathon, and 15-miler, which is what I signed up for. This will be my longest race to date, as I’ve never done more than a half marathon before. With 3,200 feet of elevation gain, it will also be my hilliest.
I have been harboring this notion that I should do a run longer than 15 miles, to be in better shape to actually make a race of it. I am on semi-vacation this week and was considering a 17-mile run that I’ve been thinking about, out Elm Street, up to Shady Rill, and back to town via East Hill Road. We were supposed to be hit by Hurricane Henri early in the week, so I was thinking about working Monday and doing a long run later in the week. But Henri turned out to be a big nothingburger around here, and with a baseball game on Wednesday – well, it just seemed to make more sense to do a long run today.
But for some reason, I didn’t think I was up for 17 miles today. Part of it was that I decided late to even do this, and I wasn’t going to be able to get out until late morning. (11:58 to be precise, according to Strava.) It was supposed to be overcast, but still warm. And 17 miles was a longer time commitment than I felt I could make. So I instead decided to run up Bolduc Road, which loops back to East Hill Road in Middlesex. This splits the difference between the Shady Rill run and the Portal Road loop I’ve run a few times, at what I estimated to be 10 miles.
For some reason I looked at my Strava stats before the run, and learned that I was just 11.9 miles away from reaching 1,000 for the year. It seemed easy enough to get from 10 to 12 miles. I figured I could just fiddle about a bit at the end to add an extra two.
Bolduc Road is about two miles as a straight shot from my house, but I decided to avoid some of Elm Street by doubling back to Cummings and running through North Branch Park and North Branch Nature Center. It was more pleasant that way, but still left a mile and a half along the busy highway. I got to Bolduc just at three miles. I’ve run this way many times, but always peel off at Portal Road. I biked up this way once three years ago, but all I remembered was the road turning into some bike-unfriendly class 5 terrain.
What I did not remember was that this road just slogged uphill for another mile past Portal Road, a total of 550 feet gained over 1.25 miles. And it’s really pretty ugly for most of that, gravel road through some scraggly trees, with the occasional beat up house or trailer. At the top of the hill, at the end of the maintained road, is a scrap metal yard with probably the best view of any scrap metal yard in the state. It was a nice reward.
The class four section, which leads to another maintained section on the other end of Bolduc Road, wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. There were some ruts, but it’s definitely passable with a high-clearance vehicle. Maybe not an Outback, but a good pickup will get you through. A little way in I saw a rock with some little cairns on it, marking a little trail. If it were more of an exploratory day I would have checked out the trail, but instead I kept going. Mere yards afterward the trees opened up to a gorgeous beaver pond wetland, quiet with a ton of summer wildflowers surrounding it: goldenrod and Queen Ann’s Lace and Joe Pye weed. It was quite spectacular. Just across from the pond was a driveway for a big house on a hill, and the road returned to a more maintained status, though there weren’t any other houses until I got close to East Hill Road.
There’s a little more gradual uphill on East Hill Road, then there’s a little zig-zag before it hangs a left to connect up with Terrace Street and down into Montpelier. My plan was to head down and then fiddle about in the side neighborhoods to pick up some miles. But at the sharp turn there was an intersection with two other roads. I had never been on either and didn’t even know what they were. I’m a map guy and was curious. One was Davy Road and the other was Upper Sunnybrook Road.
I had forgotten about Sunnybrook Road. I knew there was a lower portion (called Lower Sunnybrook Road) that connected back to Route 2 just past the Middlesex/Montpelier border, and that there was a path that connected Upper and Lower Sunnybrook, which I imagined to be not unlike the Jeep road section of Bolduc. I figured this would be an easy way to get to my 12 mile goal.
Upper Sunnybrook started with another climb, which I wasn’t looking for at this point almost six miles in, but you do what you have to do when exploration is at hand. There weren’t any houses at the start, but that changed on the other side of the peak, where folks had taken advantage of the south-facing hillside and lovely views to build homes. After a bit the road came to an end, and I followed a rather vague, overgrown opening to find the trail. It seemed like there had been some vehicle use, ATV likely, but definitely not as much as on Bolduc. Then the “road” became a highly-eroded washout. I sought higher ground and found a little trail to the side, which shortly led to some construction on the upper end of Lower Sunnybrook. I jogged down that to Route 2. Other than the washout, there was scant evidence of an actual brook here.
There had been plenty of sunshine, though, even though I was treated to some clouds on Lower Sunnybrook. By now I was eight miles in. Sunnybrook comes out a couple hundred yards from Cross Road, which gave me the opportunity to not spend a lot of time on Route 2. Cross Road cuts over to Three Mile Bridge Road, which allowed me to double back a little to Junction Road and hit the bike path. Doing the math in my head, I knew this would be about 4.5 miles, which would get me to 12.5. That would get me over 1,000. But at 12.5 miles, you might as well just run the extra .6 and call it a half marathon.
The end of this run mirrored the end of the Virtual VCM that I did in May 2020, only I didn’t have Katie for support. I wasn’t feeling quite as beat up as I did that day, but it became a slow trudge to the end. I had to go up Main Street, then down Franklin to the condos, back through the Meadow, and past my house to the pool to get to 13.1. I stopped once for a traffic light, and only walked to take on some food. I was thankful to have my Camelback hydration vest with plenty of water, though it was too warm to be fully satisfying. I was left wondering how I ever have the energy to run somewhat fast at the end of races; for all the climbing I did today, it’s still a lot less hilly than the Adamant Half Marathon. Maybe having more time to plan helps get mind and body in alignment for a run like this?
Anyway, fingers crossed for Groton!
RUN STATISTICS: Distance/Elevation/Time: 13.13 miles/957 Feet/2:22:21 Weather: 75 degrees, partly sunny, humid but not oppressively so Threatening barking dogs chained up in the wilds of Middlesex: Two Miles too many: three Other runners seen: just one that I remember Overall Rating: 5/10
Joe's Running Blog 