Looking back – July 2013: This month I focused on Mountain racing and my I paid the price. Loon Mountain Race - This is one of my favorite races in the USATF NE mountain series probably because it reminds me so much of “European” style mountain racing. It isn’t the type of racing that I’m at the best at (too much downhill and too many quick pace changes). I prefer a steady difficult climb, but at least with the progressive difficulty at Loon I can generally reel in people who go out too fast.
I woke up with a headache and just didn’t feel up to racing, but hoped that feeling would go away once I got to the site.
I woke up with a headache and just didn’t feel up to racing, but hoped that feeling would go away once I got to the site.
The field was over 300 runners which is incredible for an off-road Mountain race. By the mile I had moved up to 15th place and with the start of the steady climb I felt a lot better. By the 2 mile mark I’d rolled by a couple of other guys and was thinking I had a shot at the top 10. I ran the entire climb but it was slow (from the turn onto UWB to the summit gondola took me 9:14). I felt pretty good and closed the gap on the three guys in front of me, but knew I’d need to be well in front of them with the crazy final ½ mile descent. I can’t complain about the race, I gave what I had.
Pl Time Name CITY CLUB
1 44:58 Eric Blake 34M West Hartford CT La Sportiva
2 47:28 Josh Ferenc 31M Saxtons River VT BAA
3 48:24 B Newbould 31M Nottingham NH WRT
4 48:59 Eric Macknight 24M Ballston Lake NY WRT
5 49:27 Kevin Tilton 31M North Conway NH CMS
6 50:17 Todd Callaghan 43M Beverly Ma MA GCS
7 50:39 T Williams 27M Jackson NH
8 50:54 Drew Best 31M Amherst MA SMAC
9 51:27 Dave Dunham 49M Ward Hill MA CMS
10 51:59 David Bedoya 36M Somerville MA BAA
11 52:32 Tim Van Orden 45M Bennington VT CMS
16 55:46 Tim Mahoney 33M Holyoke MA CMS
46 64:42 Paul Bazanchuk 58M Center Conway NH CMS
165 82:11 David Lapierre 49M Chelmsford MA CMS
230 92:32 Melissa Tuomi 34F Holden MA CMS
254 97:47 Ray Desautels 47M Oxford MA CMS
289 108:12 Walt Kuklinski 64M Princeton MA CMS
Up North Orienteer (UNO) teammate Ernst Linder was looking for a partner for the U.S. Rogaine championships and it was an open weekend for me, so off we went. Rogaining is a sport of long distance cross-country navigation involving both route planning and navigation between checkpoints using a variety of map types. In a rogaine, teams of 2-5 people choose which checkpoints to visit within a time limit with the intent of maximizing their score. Teamwork, endurance, competition and an appreciation for the natural environment are features of the sport. Championship rogaines are 24 hours long; however rogaines can be as short as 2 hours
Race morning came quickly and we seemed to have little time to get all of our gear sorted before the noon start time. The huge 1-24,000 scale maps were handed out at 10:00am and we set about planning our course. Ernst devised a loop that would be about 75km, measured in a straight line (add at least another 25km to get an idea of the actual distance we’d need to cover).
We got our packs together and at noon about 50 teams headed off in all directions. Some teams were doing the 12 or 6 hour versions but most were running the championship 24 hour race. We were pretty lucky that Saturday was mostly cloudy which kept the temperature reasonable for mid-July.
The day went by pretty quickly as we worked our way south and did a loop that included some of the steeper more difficult climbing and descending (while we were still relatively “fresh”). After the second control we didn’t see another team during the remaining daylight hours. I guess that isn’t so unusual when you are spread out over 64 square miles! We covered about 27 miles during the daylight hours.
I was hoping it would be a nice cool night but it turned out to be warm and humid. I was uncomfortably damp the whole time, but I guess that beats overheating. The night-time hours seemed to go by very quickly. The pace was much slower in the dark, but the woods were mostly nice for running with very little rock under foot. Ernst set a very determined pace and I jogged behind him. Ernst is one heck of a navigator; I swear I wasn’t sure where we were for a fair amount of the time. During the hours of darkness (9:30 PM – 5:00 AM) we covered about 13 miles. The final 7 hours were foggy, not due to fog but due to brain function getting less reliable.
We crossed the line exactly 1 hour short of the full 24. Our total of 2200 points was good enough to get us 5th place in the male open category and 3rd place in the masters. We ended up covering just about 80km or about 50 miles.
Results:
Place Team Name Team members points Cat U.S.
1 Gnome & Troll Bakken, Justin 2700 MO Y
Mayer, Brian
2 Speedy Goats Balter, Greg 2700 MV Y
Masalkov, Vadim
3 MadAthlete 1 Brautigam, Joe 2700 XO Y
Housman, Molly
Lamb, David
4 Phast Generation Brake, Glen 2290 MSV Y
Walker, Ken
5 GOALS ARA Freedland, Brent 2210 MO N
Reiss Brian
6 Action D&E Dunham, Dave 2200 MV Y
Linder, Ernst
Next up was the U.S. Mountain running championships - This version of the Cranmore Mountain race would be unusual with us doing three laps of down then up. This was done to closely match the way the World Championships will be run later this year. The top runners were out there trying to earn a spot on the U.S. team; I was hoping to make it through without too much damage to my somewhat beaten-up body.
I felt okay but my head just wasn’t in it. I’ve been in a funk since Mt Washington and just can’t get that normal adrenaline rush prior to a race. Maybe that was a good thing with the first 2k being downhill and most people heading out at full speed. About 200 of us lined up, Paul gave the countdown and zoom we were off!
My plan was to run the first lap conservatively and then hopefully start reeling in the fast starters. I took a quick count (out of curiosity) in the first half-mile and counted at least 50 people ahead of me. The climb was pretty tough but I felt like I ran within myself, knowing it would be progressively more difficult each lap. I came through the top in 21:55 which was about what I’d hoped for. The second downhill was a bit easier mentally as I had a clearer picture in my mind of what lay ahead. I felt like I was getting a good rhythm on the climb, there were a lot of guys walking and my slow but steady running was reeling them in. My split for the second loop was 21:52 and I was still feeling “okay”.
The final descent was tough; I tried to focus on a couple of guys ahead of me and just get down, knowing it was only 7+ minutes to the bottom made it a little easier. My final lap split was 22:34, so I’d only slowed 42 seconds and it was evenly split between the down and the up. I was 21 seconds slower on each for that final lap. I picked up 2nd in the masters and got the gold medal in the 45-49 age group. I picked up another gold medal as CMS took the masters team title (TiVO was 3rd master, 2nd in the 45 and Paul Bazanchuk was the gold medal winner in the 55-59). We also mined silver in the open category losing to Gate City by a mere 3 seconds!
Top 5
Pl Time Name Age City, State
1 56:23 Joseph Gray 29 Renton, WA
2 56:28 Zachary Ornelas 22 Ann Arbor, MI
3 56:45 Max King 33 Bend, OR
4 57:58 Glenn Randall 26 Mesa, CO
5 58:11 Ryan Hafer 27 Colorado Springs, CO
CMS finishers
15 1:02:58 Patrick Rich 36 South Hamilton, MA
25 1:06:21 Dave Dunham 49 Bradford, MA
36 1:11:06 Tim Van Orden 45 Bennington, VT
62 1:22:45 Paul Bazanchuk 58 Center Conway, NH
109 1:35:34 David Lapierre 49 Chelmsford, MA
155 1:51:56 Ray Desautels 47 Oxford, MA
180 2:18:59 Walter Kuklinski 64 Princeton, MA
Next up was the Carver Cranberry 5m – which was the USATF New England 5 mile championships. Knowing that the team might need me as a 5th man was the only reason I made the trek to Carver.
I found a spot about 15 rows back and waited for the start. My hope was to run around 7:00’s (I hadn’t broken 8 pace in a training run until the day before), but I’d also looked at last years results and knew that top 10 in the 45-49 was around 29:30. I tucked that away in the back of my mind. I hit the mile in 6:12 and thought “Okay, if I pick it up a bit maybe I can break 30”. I slowly started passing people and hit 2 miles in 12:22I was passing people who were really having trouble in the heat and humidity. A final mile of 5:56 got me a 30:40 for 5 miles. It looks like if I had skipped the race it wouldn’t have changed the team outcome. Oh well, sometimes you have to “take one for the team”.
Masters results
1 26:28 Binny Mitchell GMAA 44
2 26:44 Joseph Navas WRT 42
3 27:02 Greg Putnam CMS 43
4 27:16 Wayne Levy BAA 48
5 27:35 Joe Noonan GMAA 45
6 27:47 Titus Mutinda RUN 48
7 27:49 Jason Cakorous HFC 48
8 27:55 Justin Renz HFC 41
9 28:03 Jason Porter CMS 44
10 28:07 Chris Magil BAA 40
13 28:23 Joe Shairs CMS 45
18 28:55 Arthur Besse CMS 40
29 30:41 Dave Dunham CMS 49
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