The cross country racing season is winding down and there were not many options for this weekend. I got in my best workout this season and probably this year with a 3 mile tempo run of 19:41 (6:34 pace) earlier in the week and felt good enough that racing seemed like a good idea. The Mayor’s cup was a possibility but I saw the “Hills are alive” 5k XC race checked a lot of boxes for me. Entry fee was only $15, race started at 9:30 am, it was put on by GMAA who always do a nice job. I signed up and Eric invited me to crash at his place on Saturday. That’d cut into the nearly 4 hour drive to Milton VT.
We saw some nice alpenglow on Camels Hump on the drive with the sun rising on the hour drive to Milton. We were among the first to arrive and once they were set up I retrieved my number. Cute touch, each number had a little note from the race director on it. Eric was dealing with a quad injury so I headed off on a warm-up course preview on my own while he ran on the road. I think the road would have been better as I worked fairly hard on the course and only managed a 9:22 pace! The course was much more trail than cross country. It was definitely not the kind of course I was hoping for. Funny, it was on a par 3 golf course but only used the golf course for the first half-mile (which was very nice). The rest of the course was on twisty trail. It seemed like you never went more than 20 yards before taking a sharp turn. There were a LOT of roots as well and a little bit of mud. I was really worried after the warm-up that I might get hurt on this. Number one goal was to get through this with as little damage as possible. I will say that GMAA did a great job with course marking and had a lot of Halloween decorations as well. They obviously had some fun out there.
I switched into Inov-8 trail shoes (instead of XC spikes due to the nature of the course) and headed out for another mile. Temps were about 35 degrees and there was a stiff breeze. Not terrible for late October racing. I got back to the start with about 3 minutes to spare and we were off. I found myself in 10th right away and got passed by a younger kid in the early going. I got back around him as we exited the grass and got onto the trails and then moved into 9th before reaching the mile. The second mile had most of the really rough terrain and with all of the twisting and turning you could see other runners both ahead and behind. I slowly gained on 8th place and was as close as about 5 seconds at the 2 mile mark but I think he was holding back in the early going as he was soon out of sight. I continued running as hard as possible worrying about a couple who didn’t look too far behind at 2. I crossed the line in 22:16 for 9th place and first in the 60+. Mostly just glad I did not get hurt (although my ankles and knee were already yelling at me at the finish).
Eric and I did a nice 2 mile warm-down on the road and then called it a day. I broke up the drive with a stop in Warner to loosen up with 3 miles on the Stevens rail trail. Oddly, I bumped into Joe Astle who I hadn’t seen in years. He used to do Mt Washington and some of the mountain series races. Always nice to catch up with some of the old school runners still out there doing it!
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