I ended this Easter long weekend with breaking my 44 day ban on chocolate for Lent, and started it with a win in a 10k trail race.
Wow, was it really 44 days? That's longer than the winner is on Survivor for. I've unintentionally trained to be on Survivor. They basically go 39 days without chocolate. Weak!
Enough about chocolate though, time to recap my first trail race of the season... I'll just be recapping this while devouring the ears off chocolate bunnies (and the rest of the body).
I went into this run with the mindset that it was a low priority race. Reason? I had a hard race 2 weeks ago, I have another race next weekend (which I'll also treat as low priority), and then in 2 weeks from now I have a high priority race in New York.
Happily starting in the middle of the pack and waving to Alison. The overall winner is in the foreground dressed in blue, running powerhouse Heather.
The main intention of this race was to get the nerves used to racing trails before the big events, and get the body used to racing trails before the big events. I was adamant I didn't want to start fast. I just wanted to get used to a race environment again.
By about 1km in I was happily settled into a rhythm and I had cleared a bit of traffic. Some of these early trails got icy leading up to the 3km mark though, so I had to pass a few more people in front of me who couldn't handle the technical footing as well as I could. Not being arrogant here, it's the Orienteering background ;-)
From about 3km in, we were out of the trails and on a tarmac path...which I thought was temporary. But it wasn't. It continued like this with sharp twists and small rolling hills until we looped back to the start area to say hi to the crowd at the 6km mark.
The scenery and paths in the 4-6km section were much like this.
I was very comfortable at this point, still felt like I was running in 3rd gear. But I was starting to get concerned at wearing my off-road Merrells rather than my road running Brooks. The problem was the downhills on hard surfaces. Too many aggressive downhills in low rise shoes shreds your leg muscles.
I still plan on running today, and the next day, and the next week. If I was running on softer ground with these shoes it wouldn't have been a problem. So to remedy this, I'd encourage the organisers to promote this as a "cross country" event, not "trail running". That's all. I'm not going to complain about this event because it was fantastic, and it still gets 5 stars from me.
So from 4-6km I had about 3 people spaced out 50 metres each in front of me. I couldn't claw them in here, but I was just comfortable with keeping an eye on them and seeing how I felt. I knew that the race would take a different turn (literally a sharp 180 degree turn) once we reached the spectator point at the 6km mark.
The race started for me at this point. As soon as we turned I paced up to the guy in front of me. As far as I could tell, he was 2nd overall male, and 1st overall male was an orange shirt runner 2 places in front of him. He was wearing a shirt with the words "Blackburn".
I paced myself up to Blackburn to test my legs. I was fine. So I held onto him to see how he'd respond. In a section where I thought he was slumping I surged past him. But I wanted to put some distance on him, so I surged all the way to the female runner 50 metres in front of Blackburn. When I saw that she was struggling, I surged past her straight away. I didn't want Blackburn to think that was a temporary surge, I wanted to put out any flame of hope he had.
It was at this point that I saw Alison spectating. I love having her support out there, and this was at a point where it mattered.
Alison chased me down to take this photo, and I was about to chase down the 2nd guy in orange, which as far as I could tell was the leading male.
It was here that I was thinking that winning this, was actually a possibility. I still had a few hills and I didn't want my energy to die. So I still had to tread patiently and wait for the right moment to catch up to the orange guy.
That moment came just after the 8km turnaround point at the top of the hill. I saw exactly how far in front he was from me, and how far behind my next challengers were. I used the downhill to really pace myself into orange guy, and held my position there for a bit. It was here that I saw that there was another guy in front of us who was 1st!
I did exactly the same thing with orange guy as I did with Blackburn. I waited until I could see some sign of weakness, then I surged until I put some distance between us.
At about 9km I was halfway in between orange guy and the 1st place male. I surged up to the 1st place just before a hill, held back for 10 seconds, then surged past him up the hill. I then pushed it on the flat and around the corner until I was out of sight.
From there I held a good pace to keep my lead until the finishing hill. At the top of the hill there was about 100 metres to go, and I saw Alison here.
Waving to Alison at the top of the final hill. Credit to her for all photos taken.
Somehow, orange shirt guy had almost caught me up. Also, I didn't know that the finish was so soon (my GPS came up 400 metres short) and I was still holding back for a final kick that never came lol. So as soon as I crossed the finish, orange shirt guy crossed just after me! I thought I was 30 seconds in front of him at this point so I was a little shocked. I dropped my guard coming into the finish, but I still finished 6 seconds in front of him. Here are my splits:
So I just scraped in a win for 1st male overall, and I expected to get a medal but not a prize as good as a Timex watch! I was shocked.
Great event by the people of Uxbridge! I'll definitely be keeping this race on my calendar.