SUCCESS!!!!LONG DISTANCE 2011 - Race #28Stone Cat Trail MarathonSaturday, November 5, 2011Success! After two DNF's at long distance events earlier this year (Sehgahunda and Finger Lakes) and a couple of missed long runs, I really wasn't sure how today was going to go... especially since Stone Cat is a loop course and I find those to be mentally challenging (it's awfully easy to convince myself that I really don't need to do another loop...)
Made it to the Doyon School in Ipswich and checked in no problem, though finding a place to stash my gear in the very crowded gym was a challenge. Waited in the very long line for the men's bathroom only to get inside and find the urinals free... sigh. Then I gathered up my gear and headed outside to put it somewhere convenient and wait for the start, along with about 300 other people walking around with headlamps on their heads. It was very strange to look up at the sky and see stars shining brightly before a race...
Didn't hear much of what the RD said before the start, just waited for the siren and then followed the line of marathon runners across the athletic fields. The Stone Cat course is a 12.5 mile loop, so we needed to do an extra 1.2 miles before heading out on the "normal" loop - we ran around the school property, then up the road a ways, before turning around and heading out on the trails into Willowdale State Forest. This led to another first for me - being in a race where my fellow runners were heading back toward me with their LED headlamps shining brightly in the dark.
I was determined to keep to a nice, easy pace on the first loop - to increase the likelihood that I would want to do a second loop. The initial trail was a jeep road through the woods, alongside some marshy areas - apparently there are a lot of wetlands in this state forest. Couldn't see much beyond the circle of light ahead of me and the lights of a couple of runners bobbing off in the distance, though the sky was starting to get lighter. Switched to singletrack after a bit, twisting and winding through the woods, uphill and downhill... walked the uphills and made the best time I could on the downs. By the time I reached the next jeep road it was light enough that I was able to ditch the headlamp and switch to my usual running hat... yeah!
The rest of the course into the 1st aid station was much the same... stretches of singletrack, stretches of jeep road, lots of woods, some wetlands... pretty much rolling terrain overall and pretty runnable to boot, albeit a fairly slow run for me. Just before the aid station there was a section of the trail that was flooded - man that water was cold! But it did encourage me to run a little faster afterwards to try and warm my feet back up.
Folks at the aid station were great, topped off my water bottle and then headed back out to more of the same, up and down through the woods, running pretty consistently on the jeep roads and mixing running and walking on the singeltrack. My favorite stretch was a section of singletrack on the hillside overlooking a large beaver pond, with nice views of the pond through the trees. Eventually I came out at the 2nd aid station, and the folks there were as great as the first one. Refilled the bottle, chatted a bit about hydration (people always want to know what the dark brown fluid in my bottles is - Kona Kola Nuun) and then took off for the 5 miles to the end of the first loop. It was long this stretch that the front runners for the 50 mile race passed me while completing their 2nd loop of the course... those guys were moving! And a few miles from the transition the top marathoners also passed me, pretty much on schedule - I had anticipated that I was moving a little under half as fast as they were, though it seemed like a lot slower when they blew by me. I was getting a little tired of meandering mountain bike trails by the time I made it back to the jeep road we'd run in on, and I was also just plain getting a bit tired - didn't have any juice at all for running uphill, and the level stretches and downhills were starting to hurt a bit too. It definitely didn't help that I was getting some chafing from my compression shorts and my right little toe was getting ground into hamburger for some reason. But overall I was in reasonably good shape for having covered 13.7 miles, and at 3 hr 21 min anticipated somewhere around a 7-7.5 hour finish, a definite improvement over my best time at Nipmuck several years ago. On the way in I also saw a number of runners I knew - Rich Busa, Karen McWhirt, and one of the faster folks from the snowshoe series, Amy Lane (who was doing the 50mi.) Always nice to see a friendly face...
Tried my best not to hang around at the transition area for too long... ditched my double bottle carrier (which I used only so I'd have a place to stash my headlamp once it got light, it was cool enough that I didn't anticipate needing more than one bottle between aid stations) and pulled a dry short sleeve short on over my long sleeved one, then started the second loop. It was clear from the get-go that I would be doing a lot more walking on this one. Familiarity with the course was both a plus (I knew none of it was too awful) and a minus (I had a pretty good idea of just how far it was to the next downhill, the next aid station, or even the next section that I might actually be able to run. I tried to approach the loop as a series of shorter distances - to the first aid station (4.2mi), then the 2nd aid station (3.3mi) and finally to the finish (5mi) since I knew I could make it those shorter distances. The singletrack sections were particularly tough, with my legs getting tired I was reduced to walking a lot just to avoid tripping and falling. Walked with Art Gulliver for a ways into the 2nd aid station- he talked about some physical challenges he has since having a stroke several years ago and losing his wife of 50 years to leukemia back in the spring. That actually got me thinking about how good I've got it and motivated me to push myself a bit more over the last five miles - but it was still a long haul to the finish. But I made it there in the end, with a total time of 7:16:45 - on the one hand slightly disappointing (it took me just under 4 hours to do the 2nd loop, after completing the longer 1st loop in 3:21) but on the other hand very exciting because (1) I actually finished after multiple DNF's over the last few years at long distance events and (2) that's roughly 15 minutes faster than my previous best time for a trail marathon (OK, the Stone Cat course is easier than Nipmuck, but still...)
I had thought to stick around and down some free food, but they were cooking a new batch of burgers and I just didn't have the patience to wait. Didn't see any signs of a shuttle back to the marathon parking (at some athletic fields about 0.6 miles away) so I walked back to the car, took a painfully slow time to change into clean clothes, and then started the long drive home (punctuated by lots of stops along the MA turnpike to try to get my legs functioning again.)
Overall, I'd have to say this was a good day. Fantastic weather - not too cold, not too hot - and sunny, so the woods were gorgeous. I accomplished what I set out to do and had a reasonably good time doing it, even beating my anticipated finish time by a bit (I expected 7.5-8 hours.) I don't know that I'd want to run Stone Cat every year, but I can definitely see myself coming back again... with luck I'll even have more training miles under my shoes and will manage a PR. But for today - I'm happy with how it all went.
JMH
2011 Event TotalsRun 307.4 mi, 76 hr 31 min
Bike 57.7 mi, 4 hr 17 minSnowshoe 74.3 mi, 18 hr 57 minstates visited: CT, MA, ME, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, VT
