As I do every March, I
headed down to Florida to visit my parents (and do their taxes). This
year I was able to find a race nearby that looked interesting. I flew
down on Saturday still feeling the remnants of New Bedford in my legs and a
lousy head-cold stuffing up my sinuses. On Sunday morn I was up at 5:30am
and at 7am we drove the 30 minutes to the Trout Creek State park. I
signed up for the 15km trail race (there was a 5km starting simultaneously).
The 15km would start with a northern 10km loop then finish with the southern
5km loop. I headed out for my warm-up hoping that I’d be able to find my
way around the 5km loop and get in a sneak-peek before the race. The
course was very well marked and very run-able. They had mentioned the
last 5k was much more technical than the first 10k but it wasn’t even Colorado
technical, I was going to be way overdoing it by wearing Inov-8 trail shoes
(road flats would have been fine). With very little climb and great
footing I expected to run around 6:30 pace and told my parents I should come
through the start again after about 40 minutes of running.
It was warming up as about
250 lined up for both races, temps were in the low 60s at the start and low 70s
at the finish but comfortable in the shade. The start was interesting as
they had us line up about 30’ below the berm and we’d run up the hill right at
the start. The 15k would turn left and the 5km would go right. I
took the lead right from the start with 2 guys following right behind me.
I probably went a bit too easy the first mile (643) and then tried to pick it
up a bit. It was VERY twisty from 1 to 3 miles, we had very few sections
with 100m of straight. At the top of the 10km loop we popped out on a
road and I swung wide telling the guys I was hitting the water-stop. They
both passed on getting water and moved on ahead of me. The pace really
picked up! I stayed close until we got back on the berm and ran my
fastest mile of the day (621) despite losing ground. I was about 5
seconds behind 2nd place and 20 behind the leader at the 5 mile
mark. Soon after we hit some more twisty stuff and we both closed on the
leader. We then had a short bushwhack and a funny hill climb up a big
mound of seashells! After that we were back on the berm and heading
through 10km. Man, the leader really took off and I was feeling the
distance, the warm sun, and the lack of speed. I fell to 25 seconds back
and 10 behind 2nd place. At 7.5 I grabbed a water and checked
out where 4th place was (we were headed out of a quarter mile loop)
he was not into the loop yet so I had a couple of minutes on him. Right
after that the leader stopped short clutching his hamstring. I went by
him and he offered me a “go after him”. Good plan! Hard to
execute. I would lose sight of the new leader on the twisty parts then
when we got to a straight I’d realize he wasn’t that far ahead. My legs
started to feel very heavy and I was running out of energy over the last mile.
I slowly lost ground and ended up crossing the line 24 seconds back.
First LOSER.
This was a really nice
race, they did a great job marking the course and there were plenty of aid
stations (five). I got a trophy that featured a metal runner attached to
a rock. Very ‘old school’.
Place
Time
Name
Age
City
Pace
1 1:01:47 Chris
Petrock
47
Tampa
6:38
2 1:02:11 Dave
Dunham 53
Bradford, MA 6:40
3 1:04:48 Steve
Wilcox
47
Clearwater
6:57
4 1:04:50 Chris
Liston
40
Ruskin
6:57
5 1:05:49 Roger
Hidalgo 31
Auburndale
7:04
6 1:06:11 Bill
McDonald
57 Bradenton
7:06
7 1:06:36 Luke LeMond
38 St.
Petersburg 7:09
8 1:09:34 Jay
Lund
47 Bonita
Springs 7:28
9 1:10:28 Dan
Kutina
40 Tampa
7:34
132 finishers
1 comment:
Man, I wish you harassed an alligator.
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