After the Leaves Have Fallen 20K
Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005
2005 After Leaves Have Fallen race results
After Leaves Have Fallen race info
2005 After Leaves Have Fallen photo slideshow
Well, so much for this being the last of the Strenuous Weekends… yesterday I mailed in my registration for the Lil’ Rhody Run Around, an 8 mile trail race down in Rhode Island which has the advantage of being about half an hour from the home of an old friend from grad school. So as of right now, there are nine strenuous weekends – 11 weeks altogether, from Sept. 11 through Nov. 20, with only two weekends “off” in that time period. 95 miles of biking and 75 miles of running over 9 weekends. (Not to mention riding and running during the week…) After the last two weeks (13.1 miles last week, 12.4 this week) it will be nice to “only” run 8 miles. (And it’ll be nice to see my friend and his wife, too.)
On to the After the Leaves Have Fallen 20K, at Lake Minnewaska State Park, one of the most beautiful places on Earth…
The short version:
Very little mud and no rain… but a few more blisters and two VERY tired, sore legs. Finished in 2:34… not bad for 12.4 miles with a blown knee.
The (much) longer version:
I almost didn’t go. Woke up with my right knee feeling better than it did yesterday (it went out on Friday night during iaido class) but still knew that running 12+ miles on it wasn’t the best plan I’ve ever had. Added to that was a puddle of antifreeze under my car, which had me more than a bit concerned about driving 90 miles to the Shawangunks. It wasn’t totally clear I was going until I got on the Thruway in Coxsackie – at that point I had stopped and checked that I still had coolant several times, and the temperature gauge was registering normal driving temperatures, so my stubbornness won out over good sense and I went. (Instead of spending part of the day under my car trying to figure out what’s leaking. That’s later this week. Wahoo.)
Weather on the way down was great – warm and sunny. Got to the mountains and found the clouds, as well as a stiff wind that made it pretty darn cold. Strapped myself up, debated over what to wear, and finally settled on a shirt that ultimately was a little too warm but manageable. Soon after that – we started (a plus to all the delays getting there – not a lot of time to wait around!)
As usual, I couldn’t hear the race director describing the course (why people in the back won’t shut up and listen to that kind of thing is beyond my comprehension... after all, it’s us slow people who are most likely to end up on our own and wondering if we’re on course!) Was briefly passed by the person running sweep, but he dropped back and ran for most of the first two hours with me. (More on him later.)
As always, the route through Minnewaska was gorgeous. The sun came out right after we started and stayed out the whole time. This year we ended up taking a trail I’d never been on before – VERY cool! Not quite as many cliff top views as the usual trail, but still some great sights. The first 3-4 miles were almost totally uphill – THAT was a challenge, and made this course more difficult than the route we ran 2 years ago. (Of course the weather was beautiful today and in ’03 it rained the whole time… guess there are tradeoffs all around.) After that it was downhill, level, or gradual uphill until the last 2 miles, which was mostly uphill. LOADS of fun after running 10.5 miles to get to that point.
After the 1st bit until the last 2 miles, I didn’t see another runner except for the sweeper (well… not totally true. When we were running around Lake Awosting I could see other runners on the opposite side of the lake.) 2 miles from the finish I passed two other runners who looked to be having a tough time. And at 2 hrs 33 minutes I hit the finish and got to hear the end of the awards (I thought I should get the “dumb enough to run with a freshly-blown knee” award, but since the awards were boxes of donuts it’s just as well I didn’t.) Then I hobbled back to the car, packed up, and said hi to the nice troopers running a reg/insp checkpoint out on the road down the mountain. Also stopped a few times to snap some pictures of the ridge… it was pretty hazy, so don’t know how those will come out. My pictures from the course should be good…
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The sweeper was a guy named John McGovern, who turns out to be one of the top amateur duathletes in his age group (40’s) in the USA. (And it sounds like he’s pretty good internationally, too…) Apparently he had a bad race at the World Championships (in Australia, a month ago!) and took a month off from training, so he agreed to sweep today figuring it would force him to get in some time running without pushing real hard. Little did he know he’d be pushing hard to slow down to my pace! Anyway, I got to hear some fairly interesting stuff, and he was very gracious about running at my pace (I told him several times that if he wanted to run on ahead, I’d be fine. All he needed to do was let the water stop volunteers know what I looked like so they’d know when the last person came through. He stuck with me until just under 2 hours, at which point he said his family was waiting and that he’d told them he’s be back after 2 hours and I assured him I’d be fine so he could leave with a clear conscience. (To give you some idea of his speed… I ran the Summer Solstice 14k run at Minnewaska in 1:33, which was one of the best runs I did all summer. He finished in 3rd place in 52 minutes.) Master Hillicoss might have enjoyed talking with him too – apparently he’s really into good wines. Anyway, he seemed like a good guy (though I doubt I’d want to compete against him… I suspect he’s not so nice then) and probably pushed me to run a little faster than I would have otherwise.
So all in all, I’m glad I ended up going to this. Would have been nice to do it without the blown knee (which didn’t bother me running, but I must have put a lot of extra stress on my left leg, because my left calf is very sore) and maybe finish in a little less time, but realistically that might have saved me at most a dozen minutes or so… I still finished in less time than 2 years ago, and that was on an easier course. And I got to go to Minnewaska, which is always worth doing.
Next weekend – a much needed weekend off from races…
JMH
