TWENTY YEARS, Part 3Sunday, September 14, 2025
After doing several races and lots of running and riding over the summer, I started planning for a few events in the fall. One was the Lowlander Century Ride out in the Finger Lakes Region, which I eventually decided against when I really struggled with long rides toward the end of summer. But locally the MHCC put on a weekend of rides of various lengths, so I decided to tackle one of those. Plus the companion race to the Rochester Spring Classic Du, a fall WMAC race, and two races down in the Gunks. Eventually the list grew into 9 races over 11 weekends, which I dubbed my "Nine Strenuous Weekends" (it actually started as the more alliterative Seven Strenuous Weekends, but grew into nine...)
9-11: MHCC Metric Century Ride
9-17: Jordan Alpine Classic 8.5mi road/trail race
9-25: Pfalz Point 10mi Trail Challenge
10-2: Rochester Autumn Classic Duathlon
10-9: Monroe Dunbar Brooks 10.5mi trail race
10-22: Black Diamond Off Road Duathlon
10-30: Hairy Gorilla Trail Half Marathon
11-6: After the Leaves Have Fallen 20k trail race
11-20: Lil Rhody Runaround 8mi trail/road race
(I had run After the Leaves a few years earlier, but all the others were new to me... as was the challenge of doing an event pretty much every weekend!)
After 2005, other than the MHCC ride, I did all of these multiple times, along with a variety of other fall races. Over time, all but the last three have closed up shop. Lil Rhody is still pretty much the same race it was 20 years ago, while After the Leaves was expanded into a half marathon, and both After the Leaves and Hairy Gorilla are run on different courses than were used in 2005. I'm hoping to do some version of those last three this fall, though in the cases of HGH and AtL I may have to register and then run them solo, since I'm currently too slow to do those kinds of distances in under the cutoff times that are in place.
