Canterbury XC race

 I wasn't planning on doing the Canterbury XC race as it was the Friday night before the USA masters XC nationals (Sunday).  Tom Raffio asked me if I'd be interested in joining his Delta Dental squad in some friendly competition.  With the caveat that I'd run but not race, I was onboard.  Then I had a bad flare-up of a strain/tear in my anterior tibialis.  I ended up this week wearing a walking boot whenever I was not running.  I also cut back on my mileage in a big way and started in on some heavy duty anti-inflammatories.  It made things nearly manageable but not fantastic.  I headed up to Canterbury for the 5pm race with a plan of running somewhere around 7:00 pace to get my legs a little turnover without (hopefully) doing any damage for the Sunday race.

I got there in plenty of time to check out the course for a warm-up.  It was a nice tough XC course, good mix of grass, dirt, trail, and cart path.  There were also two tough little hills that we'd do twice as it was a 1.5 mile loop.  It was nearly 70 degrees and very humid as I finished my warm-up.  Tom had nice black singlets for the team and I grabbed one and put on my number and did another mile to stay loose.  My shin wasn't terrible.  The entire NHTI team was warming up and looked impressive.  I figured they'd take it out pretty hard, I was guess I'd aim for a top 10 finish and hoped to run even for the two loops.

Off we went and I eased into 12th place by 1/2 mile into it.  Only two of the guys ahead of me were non-NHTI.  I hoped to pick them off.  By the mile I'd moved up to 8th place and on the first climb I moved up to 6th.  One guy went by me and I hit the end of the first loop in 7th place (10:21).  I upped the effort a bit figuring I'd need to if I wanted even splits.  Soon after I moved back into 6th place and by 2 miles I could see 5th and 4th off in the distance.  By 2.5 they weren't so far in the distance!  I made a move on the climb and got into 5th place (thus stopping NHTI from getting a perfect 15 points) but never closed on 4th place who had a strong finish.  I crossed the line in 20:42 which meant my second (slightly longer) lap was exactly the same time!

I was pretty happy with the effort (6:49 pace) especially given the 336' of climb and drop. I'm hopeful that my shin holds up and I can go back and really race the finale on Oct 23.

1 17:35 Michael Mott                 M19 NHTI

2 18:40 Ethan Dodenhoff           M18 NHTI

3 19:46 Rovanee Nickson           M20 NHTI

4 20:21 James Barrett               M19 NHTI

5 20:42 Dave Dunham               M57 Delta Dental

6 20:49 Nickolas Dalton             M18 NHTI

7 21:03 Graham Hayslip             M30 Mugwumps

8 21:36 Lucas Robichaud           M29

9 22:24 Ben Cone                      M18 NHTI

10 22:36 Jasper Bator                M19 NHTI

 

 

Age Graded

1          Dave Dunham                57         M          17:16    6:41      20:44

2          Michael Mott                  19         M          17:35    5:40      17:35

3          Ethan Dodenhoff            18         M          18:40    6:01      18:40

4          Rovanee Nickson           20         M          19:46    6:22      19:46

5          Freeland Hubbard          67         M          20:15    8:31      26:26