Charlotte Running Company Trail Race Recap
In years past, this race had been my yearly kick off race.
However, this happened a few weeks ago in Albemarle so I should run a little
better with a race under my belt. Right?
I’ll let you be the judge here.
I grabbed some warm up miles on the trails. I want to see
the trail conditions. Is the trail dry? Is it muddy? Is it somewhere in
between?
To my surprise, the trails were in pretty good shape so I
opted for my racing flats over my typical trail shoes.
The temperature was hovering around 40 degrees near race
time so I went with just gloves. One, they would keep my hands warm. Two, if I
did fall, I at least had one extra layer protecting my hands.
We started in the upper parking lot, and we ran nearly mile
through the parking lot area and around the channel before entering the North
Main trial. Entering here creates a log jam of runners. Add to it, this is
steep decent which is quite often slick. However, I passed through this section
unscathed. Lucky, I guess. John is following long right behind me. We begin to work
the line runners ahead of us. We pass each as the opportunity arises.
We cross over the top of ridge and begin the section along
the river. I come around one turn to see Marcus standing. He does not look hurt
but he is not moving. As I pass him, he give me some encouraging words. Still
not sure what happened to him. I never saw him after the race.
Finishing off the north main section, we move to the South
Main. During this section, we pick up several side trails. First, we do Carpet.
There are sections of Carpet that I enjoy. Then, there are sections that I
could totally skip. I begin to suspect that John is having a pretty good day.
He sticks to my rear bumper during this entire section.
Next, we pick up Wedge which goes by in a flash. I steal a
few glances to my right to see the runners on the return side of the trail. I
am gauging how far that they are in front of me.
Goat is next, and hitting Goat hurts. The entrance is rocky
and rooty and above all steep. I feel it the most in my hip flexors. My
breathing further tells me that I struggling a bit to maintain my desired pace.
Topping Goat, John goes by me. I attempted to jump on his heals but he was
descending like a mad man. All I could do is watch the distance grow between us.
About this time, I begin to notice that I am sweating pretty good. I hadn’t
expected this but my body apparently thought it needed to cool down or maybe I
was wearing a layer too much.
I held on to a small glimmer of hope that I might pull him
back once we got back on south main again. However, any hope that I had was
dashed upon enter the Toilet Bowl trail. The distance between us was going in
the direction that I did not want it to go
Exiting Toilet Bowl, John was out sight. On the bright side,
I didn’t see anyone right behind me.
Toilet Bowl was the last side trail. I had roughly another
mile to run. Time for me to dig in a little more and push for the finish.
When I exited in to the parking lot from the trail head, I
noticed that the starting line was gone. I realized that they had changed the
finish for this year. The race would be a little longer. We ran across the
parking lot and down the hill to the area where the WWC guys have their ice
skating setup. While I am never excited about running extra distance, I have to
admit; having it there made a lot of sense.
I finished the 9 miler in 67:10 and finished the race 4th
overall as the first male master. Yes, this year I dropped down in distance
from the 13 miler to 9 miler. In truth, I never enjoyed running the last half
of ½ East Main backwards. Plus, I never really understood why they run it
backwards. Anyway, dropping down in distance just made sense to me. I ran a lot of the trails that I enjoy the
most.
Now for some kudos. First, the green hoodie gets a “thumbs
up” from me. Green is my favorite color so now, I just need to keep it from
fading when I wash it. Second, if I remember correctly S2F had 4 water stops in
the 9 mile race. No chance of getting dehydrated during this race. Postrace,
they had bagels, bananas, oranges, cookie, coffee, other fluids, etc.
Essentially, they had a runner’s post run brunch. Lastly, the race awards were
head lamps with the CRC Trail race branding. I like this as it will be
something that I use in the future.
Jenn and team get a huge thumbs up for a well-run race. Of
course, I have grown to expect nothing less from them which is why I often
frequent their races.
Kickin’ up trail dust,
The Cool Down Runner
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