Race Report: Olde Rope Mill Trail Run

I have a new race report every week, huh?  In spite of my desire to stop training at this time, I have no plans at all to stop running.  If something interesting comes up, believe me I will sign up!  I’m doing a 7K this weekend.  Instant PR because I’ve never run that distance before – yeeess!

The folks at Dirty Spokes and XTERRA Georgia (still not quite sure of the difference) have a nice series of trail runs going on this year.  If you are at all curious about trail running, I highly encourage you to sign up for one of their races.  They host trail races for a lot of shorter distances which should decrease the intimidation factor.  A lot of the races are a bit out there with “Ditch The City” being their slogan and all.  With gas at darn near $4 a gallon, I’m not driving an hour to do a 5K.  Luckily, they hosted one out in my neck of the woods last weekend so of course I was going to run it.

You never know what you are going to get with a trail race so I never go in with performance expectations.  The one thing you should be sure of in a trail race is that it will take you much longer than the same distance would on a road.  It is best to just go ahead and add a minute or two per mile to your [insert race distance here] pace so you can manage your expectations.

Olde Rope Mill Park is a nice little hidden gem of a park not too far from me.  It is literally hidden down some isolated road.  I don’t know how anyone would ever run across this place unless they knew of its existence!  Kind of odd for a public city park no?  The park looked kind of new and there was a lot of construction going on in the road above.  That meant I was able to take advantage of the PoP on site and avoid lines.  Never mind that I had just gone 20 minutes before.  I think I will just have to accept that I have nervous bathroom habits even if I’m not all that nervous about a race.

I had to walk a long way down a hill to the park to pick up my number because parking was very limited.  Then I had to walk all the way back up the hill to put away my race swag.  This was the kind of hill I hate – a long slow steady incline.  My hamstrings were burning and I hadn’t even warmed up yet!  Now I was really nervous because if this was the hill situation on the road it might be terrible in the woods.

On the way to the race site, I trailed a dude who was wearing a Rock Creek 50K T-Shirt.  I immediately recognized it as part of the trail series that is hosting the ultra I want to run later this year.  I asked the runner about it and he graciously shared his experience with the race and encouraged me to try an ultra.  That’s why I don’t think it is at all douche-y to wear T-Shirts from longer races to shorter races.  I was very happy to question someone who had run part of the race I want to run later in the year.  Race shirts are often a great conversation starter between runners.

Since I was running late (as always) I had to start in the back again.  No chip time here but there weren’t that many people.  I couldn’t have been off by more than 20 seconds crossing the start line.  We took a concrete path into the woods, ran through some muddy grass and then hit the single track.

This was the same group that ran the trail half that I did a month ago and once again there was not enough off trail time to space out the runners.  Maybe this is just standard with trail races and my first experience with the Red Top Rumble was atypical.  I totally realize that I’m not going to win a race, but it is frustrating to have all that start line energy and then find yourself stuck walking behind people.

The great thing about this race is that the runners were so polite!  I’ve never had runners in front of me ask me if I wanted to pass.  This happened numerous times and I totally appreciated the gesture.  I make a supreme effort not to be the bottleneck on the trails.  You are the bottleneck if you glance back and there is a tight pack of 12 people following closely behind you.  If you are not a race frontrunner that means you are holding everyone back and you should step aside!  This is especially important on trails where there often isn’t room to run side by side.  I don’t care if someone passes me and I will move to the right if I sense someone on my heels.  Runner’s PSA – you should do the same in close quarters!

Rant aside, I passed a lot of people and settled down in a pack that I stayed with for a long time.  One girl made me laugh out loud when I passed her and she said “Nice Tushie!”  Trail runners are really encouraging.  Everytime I passed someone they had something positive to say like “Looking Strong”.  I took the hint and paid it forward several times during the race and made sure to congratulate the people I trailed for a while after the race.

I would be lying if I said this was an easy race for me.  Maybe because my quads had been sore for the past few days, but I found myself tiring after Mile 3 with 3.5 more miles to go.  There were tons of rollercoaster hills but not very many long steep hills.  I tend to tackle short hills running and walk up the long slow burners.  That meant I was worn the heck out after only 5K!  Up and down and up and down and up and down.  I took some short walk breaks because I needed them.  I was so happy to see the aid station at Mile 4 so I could gas myself up to finish.  This felt like the longest 10K of my life.

In the last mile or so, we ran a path parallel to the finish banner and it was torture.  The end of the race was so close yet so far away in reality.  My spirits soared when I saw the Mile 5 marker and realized this whole thing would be over in 10 minutes or so.  I figured I could make it through 3 songs on my Ipod.  Does anyone else measure out race time in songs when they get tired?

I had been following an older gentlemen for a long time.  He offered to let me pass a few times but I declined because I wasn’t ready.  I don’t mind people passing me but I hate passing people only to lose my energy 2 minutes later and have them pass me right back.  That just makes me feel dumb and feel like they are laughing at me for failing (even though they could probably care less).  Rest assured, if I pass you I’m making moves and you (most likely) won’t be seeing me again!

I finally decided I was ready to be done with this whole thing and passed the older gentleman.  We retraced our initial steps and ran through the muddy grass again to the asphalt.  I wanted to walk so bad again but pride won’t let me when the finish line is in sight.  I crossed in 1:03 something and I couldn’t have been happier that it was over!

Official finish time was 1:03:32 for a 9:46 min/mile.  6th out of 13 in my age group and 95 out of 177 overall.  That is right on track with my add at a least 1 minute to your mile time estimate because I could probably run a road 10K with 8:30 min/miles.

I scanned the live results after the race because I like to see how the winner’s ran.  The overall female winner finished in 48 minutes.  Whoa!  I got a little excited when I noticed that only one person was listed in the 35-39 age group.  Could I have won an age group award?  In the XTERRA trail run series, I was thrown in the with the 35-39 age group.  Because that series doesn’t end until December they use your age in that month to calculate your age group.  Unfortunately, the Dirty Spokes series ends in July and I will still be 34.  Third place in the 30-34 age group was a 58 something.

I remain firmly in 6th place and a ride or die mid-packer!

P.S.  Thumbs up to www.greatactionportraits.com for taking great picture that I actually purchased rather than ripped off the site.  When you make reasonably priced digital images available to folks they will pay for them!  $30+ for one digital picture is just not reasonable IMO.