Loon Mountain – USA Mountain running
championship
I was pretty excited to be heading back
to Loon for yet another Mountain running national championship. This
would be my last one in the 50-54 age group and I wanted to make a good
showing. With CMS teammate Tim Van Orden on the sidelines (possible
stress fracture) it looked like a three man race for the title. As has
been the case the last couple of years the guys I’d be most worried about were
teammate Erik Vandendries and acidotic Racing’s Jim Boule. We’d already
raced a number of times this year and we each had our strengths. Erik
buried me at the three New England road race championships (1/2 marathon, 15km,
and 5m) and also destroyed me at Pack Monadnock. Jim has been doing some
insane training with a LOT of climbing, it payed off as he beat me by 2.5
minutes at Mt Cranmore.
I started the weekend early driving up
to Lincoln on Friday morning and getting a nice run in on the Lincoln woods
rail trail. I met up with good friend Richard Bolt who was in town acting
as the liaison for the race. The next morning I did a fairly easy 6 miles
from Lincoln up to the Franconia notch and back. A front had passed and
the humidity was gone and it was 47 degrees at sunrise. Nice! Later
I met up with Richard and we hiked the course to ensure that all the markings
were good and to put out some “inspirational” signs. We spent 2:45 hiking
the course, the markings were great and the course was in fine shape. We
spotted a bear at 4 miles which was cool. At the summit we bumped into
some volunteers including Jim Boule who was helping set up the 300 gallons of
water at the finish. After getting down to the base I did another 3 miles
of easy running then headed for the hotel to ice my swollen and sore
ankles. I was hoping I hadn’t done too much.
I got up pretty early on race morning,
well not really early for me, in deference to the 8am start time. I had
already picked up my number so I just needed to get over in time to park and
see if anyone wanted to do a warm-up. The race site was very organized,
it had to be as they were expecting nearly 1,000 runners. I met up with
Erik V and Paul Baz and we headed out for a nice and easy 3 mile warm-up.
I got into my Inov-8 trail shoes and did another ½ mile with Dave La.
Then suddenly it was time to line up! I finished around 40th
in the last couple of USA championships so I figured second row on the starting
line would be a good place to plunk myself. My plan was to keep Erik V in
sight for as long as possible and hopefully beat him on the final downhill and
gap him enough to stay ahead on the final climb. My plan for Jim Boule
was to hope that by staying close to Erik we’d be able to drop him as the
flatter faster stuff isn’t his specialty. I had a feeling he’d go by me
on the longest steadiest climb as that has been his strength. No more
time to think. Chris Dunn gave the command and whistle and we were off.
The first ¼ mile has a bunch of quick
tight turns and my number 1 goal was to not get trampled. It was your
basic Cross-Country race start with people flying all over the place trying to
get position, which is kind of funny as this is a very wide course and most
people would be out there for a lot more than 1 hour. Plenty of time to race.
Almost immediately I found myself behind Erik and 49-year-old CMS runner (our
youngest team entrant!) Steve Brightman. This was right where I wanted to
be and Jim Boule was right there in the mix. Game on!
After the opening rolling mile we got
into the first steady climb up to the XC course. I love cutting tangents
and did a couple of checks to make sure it was clear and Jim called out “all
clear”, I cut in and he proceeded to clip my heels. We both got a good
chuckle out of that. As we turned onto the XC section we were all
together. I pushed on the first downhill and got by Erik (his weakness is
the downhill stuff). For the next 2 miles I slowly pulled away from Erik
as I passed some faster starters and work quite a bit of this section with Steve.
The trail was in very good shape and I didn’t roll an ankle or take a spill so
mission accomplished.
Once we exited the XC section the
MOUNTAIN part of the mountain race starts. The first climb isn’t that
long but you have a lot of race left. After a quick downhill we hit the
grass climb. This is my favorite part of the course. So many people
start walking here! I shortened my stride and just kept moving
along. I passed at least 10 people on this part. Then my LEAST
favorite part of the course the short downhill into the 180 degree turn.
The dirt cat track features loose sand and rock, as with any of the cat track
sections running on the edges offers the best footing. I took a sneak
peek back on the 180 and saw that Jim was still right there (5-10 seconds
back). I could also see Steve but Erik was not in sight. The LONG
climb of 9/10ths of a mile has 750’ of climb. The sun was out and it
seemed hotter than the 70 degrees. I kept focused on the guys in front of
me, trying to figure out when (if) I’d catch them. Although I was pushing
I kept thinking “Settle in when Jim catches you, then work the final
downhill”.
Finally, I reached the 1 mile to go
sign and the water-stop at the gondola. There were a lot of spectators
here and I kept listening to Andy Sachat announcing to gauge how far back Jim
was. He hadn’t caught me but maintained the distance (about 10 seconds
back now). I safely got down the steep grass section then aired it out
the best I could on the ½ mile drop. As I turned the corner onto the
Upper Walking Boss I took another look and there were a couple of guys pretty
close behind me, but I couldn’t see if one of them was Jim (or Erik). I
got into my short-stride rapid turnover climbing gait and quickly closed on a
few guys. I ended up passing 6 guys on the climb (I had the 19th
fastest time of the day on UWB). I did not feel great, the early fast
running was taking its toll. I dropped into power-walking mode and passed
a couple more (GCS’s Brandon Naro was my last catch of the day). There
were two short sections of using my hands it was so steep, there was a washout
that you had to climb which was rough. The last 100 meters on the top
seemed to take forever.
I managed to hold my place and take
Gold in the 50-54 finishing 38th overall and 5th over the
age of 40. Jim came in about 35 seconds later and Erik another minute
after to score the Silver and Bronze. Steve came in right after Erik and
that would be our masters team (40+) that would take the win. Dave La was
10th in the 50+ and our third man on the winning 50+ team.
Paul Baz led the way in the 60+ as CMS also got a win in that team
category. The only division we didn’t win was the Open where we took
Bronze. All in all a great day for the team!
Top 10 in the 50-54
1
1:01:47 Dave
Dunham
54
Bradford MA
CMS
2
1:02:24 Jim
Boule
51 Campton
NH aR
3
1:03:58 Erik
Vandendries
53 Chestnut Hill
MA CMS
4
1:07:02 Chris
Smith
52
Woburn
MA SRR
5
1:07:10 Sean
Snow
51 Dunbarton
NH
6
1:09:51 Jeff
Walker
52 Falmouth
ME Dirigo
7
1:10:41 Neil
Wheaton
50 Winchester
MA
8
1:12:40 Ray
Johnson
54 Littleton
MA
9
1:12:55 Peter
Burke
50 Westbrook
ME Dirigo
10
1:13:21 David Lapierre
54 Chelmsford
MA CMS
13
1:15:46 Paul
Young
52 North Andover MA CMS
17
1:20:01 Ed
Sheldon
53 Hooksett
NH CMS
 |
| Erik V, me, and Jim B |
No comments:
Post a Comment