the Way of the Turtle

TRAVELLIN' TURTLE, Part 2 -
Season of the SnōShū 2009 - Race #12
Hawley Kiln Klassic 5 Mile Snowshoe Race
Saturday, February 28, 2009

2009 HKK results

What a great day for a snowshoe race! Blue skies, warm sunshine, and beautiful trails through the woods of the eastern Kenneth Dubuque Memorial State Forest. Before the race Konrad pointed out that there were 9 guys at the 1st Hawley Kiln Klassic... and very impressively, most of them were there today! The course has gone through numerous iterations - one of the more interesting features of snowshoe racing is that you have to run where the snow takes you, and that means the same course won't always work from year to year. This year's course was complicated by the mid-December ice storm, and a lot of man hours were spent clearing snowmobile trails and the singletrack we ran on today - special thanks to Tom McCrumm, Marty Glendon, and Bill Glendon for all their hard work! (I also noticed a sign at the trailhead calling for volunteers to help clear trails this spring once the weather gets a bit better... I'm glad to see the forest managers in MA showing the good sense to enlist the aid of the folks who have some of the greatest interest in seeing the trails cleared, the trai, users themselves!)

After a few words about the course (snowmobile trails and singletrack) we all got set and then - it was time to run! There was a decent amount of uphill along the 1st stretch of snowmobile trail, with a short side loop to run past the Hawley Kiln, an old beehive style stone charcoal kiln - very cool! After about 3/4 of a mile we reached the top of the hill and headed off onto rolling singetrack twisting and winding its way through the woods... up hills, down hills, along level stretches, through hardwood forests and evergreen groves, past all sorts of neat glacial erratics... wonderful!

I found the singletrack very tough going in spots, because many of the races this year have been on much wider trails and, well, I'm a wider runner! Ended up whacking my calves and ankles with the edges of my snowshoes a few times - I'm glad I was wearing the smaller pair - and worked up a good sweat running, walking, hiking, and plodding through the woods. One gal passed me about a mile in, with a comment that she was going pretty slowly and if I wanted to pass her I should let her know... given that she'd caught me and passed me, I wasn't surprised that she gradually disappeared off into the distance and I never saw her again!

The second stretch of snowmobile trail in theory was a chance to run hard for a bit, except it was mostly uphill. All too quickly it was back to singletrack, this time for a climb back to where we had originally turned off the snowmobile path on the way in. Rich and Beth were at the top being very encouraging... I didn't have a prayer of breaking an hour, but I thought I might beat 1:10, so I hustled down the path as fast as I could - even started to get a stitch in my side near the end (though that's probably more a comment on what shape I'm in rather than how fast I was running.) Made it to the finish in 1 hr 9 minutes... a pretty good time for me, given the challenges of negotiating almost 3 miles of singletrack.

After that I spent a while getting my breath back while wandering back up the course to get some pictures of the kiln, the woods, and, as it turned out, Bill and Konrad running their final stretch. Chatted a bit with Walter Kolodzinski about his injuries (he runs with two full knee braces on... I remember my days of running with knee braces, though I was lucky to never need the type he's using) and then changed into some dry clothes so I could head over to brunch.

It's hard to believe that two months have gone by since the start of the 2009 snowshoe series... and we only have two races (at most) left! I'm going to miss seeing our happy (OK, crazy) crew each weekend... fortunately a lot of them also run the trail races in the warm weather.

JMH

2009 Event Totals
Run
Bike
Snowshoe 45.2 mi, 10 hr 57 min

states visited: MA, NY, VT