Looking back - Sept 2006

15 Years ago (Sept 2006) – I raced four times over this month, three of those races were within 24 hours.  I kicked off the month (09/04/06) at the Greylock mountain race.  I was having trouble with a sore toe (Morton’s neuroma) and was still recovering from the trail 50km champs a couple of weeks prior.  I basically ran the race alone finishing fourth, four minutes behind the winner and 1:30 ahead of fifth place.

1 Jon Korhonen M23        54:28

2 Andy McCarron M23       55:25

3 Kent Lemme M39          56:26

4 Dave Dunham M42        58:47

5 Donald Pacher M34       60:17

 

Next up (09/15 & 09/16) was the Reach the Beach relay a 200+ mile race from Bretton Woods to Hampton Beach with the “Loco Banditos” team.  I’d done this race once before running the anchor leg, this time I’d have a totally different experience by running the lead-off leg.  Each runner would do 3 legs as we rotate through twelve runners.  A first up I got to kick things off at 2:30pm on Friday with a climb up and down over 900’ at Bretton Woods.  I completed the 3.1 mile leg in 18:55 then drove to the end of the next leg for a 2 mile warm-down.  We followed legs until our six guys (two vans each with 6 runners) were done.  After that it was off to my next leg which was in Madison.  I had a 3.8 mile leg that 150’ of climb and was held in a dense fog in pitch black darkness.  I managed a 23:49 for the leg, did a quick 2m warm-down, then we headed off to Bear Brook state park for a couple of hours sleep.  I had an early morning long leg of 9.1 miles with about 400’ of climb/drop which I completed in 63:05.  It was a tough final leg for me.  After a 1 mile warm-down we followed all of our legs until our team finished.  We covered the 210 miles in 24:08 narrowly missing the magic 1 day mark (average pace 6:54 per mile).  We ended up taking 7^th overall and topped our age category.