Glenwood Gardens Night Race

I am back from New Hampshire (which I did manage to finish but not in a respectable time) and trying to catch up on a lot of things. And I realize I never wrote about the trail race I did a few weeks ago, nor about the State to State half marathon.

So this is about the trail race. Technically, not really a trail race. We ran around a park, and about half the race was on a paved trail, and the other half on gravel. But it was at night, so that should count for something. They are considering it part of the trail race series and it counts toward your points.

I was still recovering from the bronchitis so I didn't want to push too hard, but I also wanted to demonstrate that my placement in that last race was no fluke. So I ended up pushing it anyway.

Wore my new Petzl headlamp, and it seemed like everybody else had theirs on also. They gave us little red blinking lights to clip on our backsides so you could see the runners in front of you, and they had also marked the trail with little red lights. But other than that, it was completely dark.

For a warmup, I did multiple loops of a little grassy island up near the park clubhouse/pavillion-like structure where the race registration took place. I was one of the few people warming up, and many people were not even dressed in running clothes. Bob Roncker said we would have food after the race, which raised unreasonable expectations in my head. Turned out it was just the usual bagels, bananas and apples you might find at the end of a morning race. Bummer.

I had a brief chat with a woman at the start who had moved here from Minneapolis and she was all about how much better the racing scene was there than here. She was also whining about how she had nobody to run with because she had young kids and couldn't ever meet up with any of the groups. My heart bleeds for you. If you were looking to hook up with me, guess again because you are clearly too much of a whiner. Left her in the dust right away.

We started out downhill, and it was hard to figure the pace because I couldn't see. Just tried to stay out of trouble. We did about a mile loop on the paved part, and then came out of that loop and onto the gravel. I felt like there were plenty of people behind me. I was wearing my new Saucony Xodus trail shoes and they might have been overkill on the pavement but they were great on the gravel, and very comfortable.

On the gravel I was running next to a guy who started running on the side where the grass was. I gave that a try and decided the gravel was easier, and eventually I did leave him behind, although it did take awhile. It was so dark and I had never been in the park before, so I had no idea where I was or how much longer we had to run.

I had passed a bunch of men and a few women, and then about a quarter mile from the finish I passed an older, fit looking woman, who turned out to be one of the women from the previous race who is just a year older than I am. I want to beat her everytime. She is so much more fit looking than I am. I totally kicked her butt this time. She is still ahead of me in the standings because of me goofing off in the first couple of races, but now that has changed for good.

Really pushed it crossing the finish line just to make sure she didn't catch me, and I managed to both throw up and pee my pants. It's been a long time since I've pushed that hard! Official time was 32:39, my fastest trail race so far. This put me 14 of 33 women and 61 of 93 overall. But my age graded time put me 32 of 93, not too bad.

Notice that the smaller trail races yield a better point value towards The Dirty Dozen...wonder if they will adjust for that next year. I'm hoping that in my last two races I can wipe out yucky scores from the Ault Park and French Park races. Looks good for a better score in the 27k at least, since the field is limited to just 50 runners and there probably won't be that many women competing.

Got the updated Dirty Dozen rankings the other day, and I am # 6 woman, just behind the woman I have beaten in the last two races. I don't know if I can pull ahead of her or not, even if I do beat her in the next two races, because she has run well all the way through and I am just starting to figure this trail racing thing out.