If By Win, You Mean Dominate

This weekend, Helen and I participated in our first Double Trouble – another in the Pretzel City family of trail races. The terrain wasn't as hard as Half-Wit (or Ugly Mudder, which is the same terrain as Half-Wit, just in the other direction), probably not as hard as the Wissahickon Trail Classic, either - but significantly harder than Tyler.

It's an odd race. The course is a 15k (aka 9.3 mile) loop. You can race it once, you can race it twice, depending on if you want to go 15k (single trouble) or 30k (double trouble).

To be honest, I'd like to do a 30k trail race, but a two loop version of the race we just did didn't really appeal to me. It did appeal to Helen, but I kind of talked her out of it, which I feel kind of bad about now. Because the guy who won the men's 15k race finished 2nd in the 30k, and the guy who finished 3rd in the 15k won the 30k. Helen could've one-upped them, though. I'm sure she could have won both.

Obviously, this wasn’t the first race Helen won. But I can't remember her dominating a race like this one. The second woman didn't finish until four and half minutes after Helen.

I was generally pleased with my own race. I spent most of it alone - I finished 14th overall (although it's kind of complicated – for reasons I won't go into, some of the 30k racers who finished ahead of me count in the 15k rankings and some don't). I was around a minute behind the 13th place guy, and half a minute in front of the 15th place guy. My main goal in the second half was to not get lost. Mission accomplished! I really tried to keep my focus. I don't want to jinx myself, but I've now gone four straight trail races without getting lost. Amazingly, the races I've not gotten lost in now outnumber the races where I have gotten lost.

And Helen wasn't alone in bringing home some hardware. I managed to bring home the heavily coveted 5th place M 30-39 award. Maybe this whole turning-forty thing isn't so bad.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler

Wissahickon Trail Classic – One Year to the Next

I thought that my first post on the Wissahickon Trail Classic got the most important news out. But Helen wanted me to post on my race. And she raised a pretty good point – I've made some significant improvement from last year to this.
The course was the same this year as last. I don't think it's a 10k – it feels long to me – but it's the same, up-and-down, crazy mix of trails. And my approach was fairly similar both years, trying to go out a bit faster than I'd like in order to get position. (It's not a good race to start slow if you like going fast down hill).
Last year, my time was 45:57.
This year, my time was 42:51.

So, yeah, I've made some progress.



This photo is from around 2 miles in, I think. (I'm leading Matt Joose here, but that wouldn't last long).

There were *some* external factors. This race was much better weather for racing than last year, and we weren't running around packing before this race. I even tapered this time. But three minutes is three minutes. I'm also winding up in front of people I always used to trail.

I should also note that it wasn't like I just cruised to the faster finish. I was pretty drained from pretty early on. At some points, esp. on the uphills, I was really feeling the burn. I remember feeling a bunch of snot on my face, and not really having the energy to get it off. When I looked down at my watch at one point and saw 22 minutes, I thought that there was no way I had another 22 minutes at that level of exertion in me.

I did get a good second wind, coming down the lavender trail, which I'd guess is around mile 4-5?
The thing that killed me though – around mile 5, you get back on Forbidden Drive, for a half mile. When I hit that, it was like something clicked off. Tons of people passed me. I got back some of them on the last trail section -but not Pete, who passed me on Forbidden and then finished ahead of me. Pete, incidentally, improved around the same amount I did - he finished a few spots in front of me last year, one spot in front this year. I guess that's what we get from all the Saturday morning trail runs.

The cost of my improvement? I'm definitely not where I'd like to be in my bike fitness right now. I went out for 55 miles yesterday, and that's the longest I've done all season. So I've got to get to work on that. But for now, it's good to know that the time running has had some payoff.

Our game faces, apparently

I looked like I was suffering, but I was enjoying the race very much at that very moment.

Helen Wins! Helen Wins!

Congrats to Helen, who won yesterday's Wissahickon Trail Classic!
She did so in impressive fashion, dominating the field on a beautiful (if muddy) day down by Valley Green.