Notes
I competed with my GF in a trail 5k this past weekend at a local “Nature Center”. Living just a few miles from the George Washington Bridge in North Jersey, nature centers are where city folks come to see squirrels. The whole place couldn’t have been much bigger than 1 square mile. Anyways, the race was quick, so I will try to keep the RR quick as well.
We lined up for an 8:30 start. A quick glance around at footwear confirmed my suspicions that this was a trail race for road runners (not a pair of trail shoes in the group). I lined up near the front, the RD did his spiel…On your marks, set, GO and we were off. The first mile of the course is on streets and started down a fairly steep hill. Once we flattened out I was in about 8th place with 1st place already a good distance out. At the 2nd turn, I saw that 1st place had stopped and was looking back trying to figure out which way to go. “Left” I shouted (hoping I was right…I was).
When we turned off the streets into the woods I was sitting in 5th place with 1st place way out and 2nd, 3rd, and 4th a good 100 yards ahead of me and the fellow that was tagging along with me. At this point, I decided I would be happy with a 5th place finish (5ks hurt). When we came to the first downhill trail section, I bounded down the hill and found myself right behind the chase pack. I hung right behind them until a staircase where I actually had to stop and wait for the 3 ahead of me to go up the stairs. At the top was a water stop. I poured a cup over my head then proceeded to drop my sunglasses. By the time I picked them back up, 6th place was right on top of me again. We came to a fork in the trail and I saw a sign pointing left, but #2,3,4 were about 50 yards up the trail heading right. I hollered to them…they stopped and turned back. I continued on, now in 2nd place. I used a little extra juice through the next section and after the 2nd downhill section of trail I was comfortably running alone with a mile to go. I could hear them announcing the 1st place finisher before I could see the finish. A few more windy turns and I was back in the parking lot and through the shoot for a 2nd place Overall finish with a time of 20:20.
1st place was a minute ahead of me, 3rd place was 20 seconds behind. I hung around and clapped everyone in and watched the debacle as everyone tried to locate the finish shoot (you had to make a 90 degree turn to go through the shoot). My GF finished strong with a smile on her face as she snaked past 5-6 runners a few yards before the shoot. She had a great time and ended up finishing 4th in her age group…3rd place had been running with her, but took off at the end and beat her to the line.
All in all a successful day. I was not looking forward to the race on Saturday night because I had worked 13 days straight and a 5k race was not what I wanted to be doing on my free day, but I’m glad I showed up and took home a “silver medal”. Thanks for reading.