Wild Vine ½ Marathon
This morning, I headed to the WWC for their Wild Vine ½ marathon. Wild Vine’s date shifted by about 2 months from last year. Yet, I believe that conditions were pretty much the same. Maybe we had a few more leaves on the trail. No, strike that. We definitely had more leaves on the trail. East Main was covered in several spots. This made spotting the rots and rocks a bit more difficult.
I grabbed a few miles to get some heat in to my legs before
heading to the starting line. The course opened at 8 AM, and I wanted to be
among the few getting out first.
Just before heading off, I spotted Jamie walking-up. Jamie
and I had run several races at the WWC. We chatted for a few minutes, and
before we realized it; others started running.
We both headed off at the same time.
Having raced against Jamie for several years now, I have
come to expect him to go out hard. He usually builds up a gap on me earlier,
and then, I whittle away at his lead over the latter part of the race.
I expected the same today. For the first couple of miles,
this seemed to be the way.
But he wasn’t really pulling away from me. By the time that
we got on to the Lake Loop, I was leading with him on my “six”. Throughout the loop, I could hear his foot
falls behind me. When I popped in to the parking lot, this young guy passed me.
I was like “what”, “where” did he come from. I looked back, and Jamie was further
back.
I wasn’t sure what was going on but I had no time to think
about it.
Turning on to East Main, I settled in to a pace that I could
comfortably carry on this trail.
One guy had passed me during the opening mile. Another one
passed me before East Main. A third guy passed me on East Main. I tried to not
think about it. Knowing that all of these guys probably started well after me,
and they had caught me, reminds to me how much faster that they were running.
During one technical climb, I was churning along. This guy
on a bike was making his way up the climb. I was going to catch and pass him. As
I was, I stepped to the side of the trail, I clipped a root and went down. No
harm to my knees given that I landed in the leaves. I cut my palm. I didn’t
even realize it until later. I looked down at my palm to see the blood.
I finished up Tributary and turned back on to East Main. I
took a deep breath and dug in to the pace. I had about 3 and ½ miles to run. I needed to
keep pushing.
Helping me, I could see one of the runners that passed me up
a head. I caught him, and I tried to dig a little deeper. I knew that if I really
wanted to be in front of him that I needed to put some time between us.
Coming off East Main, I caught up to another runner, but he
wasn’t going down easily. He made me work for it. I chased him up the hill and
on to South Main. He was pretty quick as the trail dipped downward. However,
when the course turned up, I closed right up on him. Rounding one of the switchbacks,
he let me go by. My legs were tired. They hated me for not letting them slow
down.
I crossed the finish line in 1:51:13. I had expected to run
about 2 hours may be a little more. Running under 2 hours made me feel pretty
good about my effort which was surprising to me. I ran a 50k last weekend. I
didn’t think that my legs would have much in the way of a bounce. They did.
When I left, I was 3rd overall. I don’t expect to
finish there. Using previous races as a gauge, I likely will finish somewhere
between 6 and 10 overall. The results usually get published on the Monday after
race.
Honestly, I am just happy to be doing some races.
Hope your races are going well,
The Cool Down Runner
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