Run to Win

The Pisgah 50k Mountain Trail Race was this past Sunday, September 9, 2007. I really enjoyed the experience and will provide a few details about the race now that I’ve had a few days to think about the whole thing. Yesterday, I talked about my experiences during the race. Today I’d like to talk about what happened after the race.

The first order of business, of course, is that the race results are finally available. I officially crossed the finish line in 4:27:37, which means that during the race I stopped to chat with aid station volunteers for 5 minutes and 9 seconds.

Finishing at Pisgah

It has been a while since I have run a race that involved tearing off a tab from your bib, and it has been even longer since that tab was used on the results board itself. Not that this was a problem! The workers at the finish line were all cheering, and a couple of the people that finished ahead of me were also clapping their hands as I came in.

My legs were pretty sore at this point, but I felt surprisingly well. I walked around a little while and finished off my bottle of water while I sent my wife to the truck for some dry clothes and more nourishing refreshments.

The awards at the race consisted of (Click here to continue reading…)

Update: Click here for the 2007 race results of both the 50k and the 23k.
The Pisgah 50k Mountain Trail Race was this past Sunday, September 9, 2007. I really enjoyed the experience and will provide a few details about the race now that I’ve had a few days to think about the whole thing. The other day, I talked about what led up to the race and covered what happened before the gun went off. Today I’d like to talk about the race itself.

The Starting Line at Pisgah

The start of the race was scheduled for 8:45 a.m. At 8:43 a.m. it began to rain again. The race was pretty low tech, so the start consisted of a couple of stopwatches and some voice commands. As much as I love the Maine Track Club’s cannon, it was nice to not be deafened at the start of the race.

A bunch of 23k runners were clustered at the front of the starting line. The crowd of them took off with the “gun” (also known as somebody yelling “Go!”) and hurried to the front of the pack. I hung back a little since this was a new experience for me from both a trail racing perspective and a distance perspective.

The Start at Pisgah

The first mile or so was along paved roads which rolled steadily up towards some carriage roads. Once you got onto the carriage roads, there was a steep descent to get onto the trail itself. The drop was probably about 400 feet over the span of a third of a mile or so.
(Click here to continue reading…)

Update: Click here for the 2007 race results of both the 50k and the 23k.
The Pisgah 50k Mountain Trail Race was this past Sunday, September 9, 2007. I really enjoyed the experience and will provide a few details about the race now that I’ve had a few days to think about the whole thing.

Discovering Pisgah

Finding anything out about the race is not particularly easy. It is a fairly well promoted race in terms of getting in front of the people likely to run it, but actually finding anything out about it is another matter. I managed to find two race reviews. Ben Nephews wrote one after setting the course record in 2004, and Ryan Prentiss wrote one after the 2006 race. Everywhere else that I looked, everybody said that they heard that it was a really good race but had never actually run it before.

I tried to email the race director some basic questions about the race, such as what the trails were like, how easy it was for spectators to get around and whether there was any camping in the area. I never received a response, so after 3 weeks I emailed again. That also got no response. I gave up and figured that I would just show up and see what happens. It turns out that the man who checks the email address died 2 weeks before the race, so I can not really fault them for not being very responsive.

Getting to Pisgah

(Click here to continue reading…)

Update: Click here for the 2007 race results of both the 50k and the 23k.
Well, I ventured beyond the marathon today. I was 5th place at the Pisgah 50k Mountain Trail Race in 4:27 and change. My watch had 4:22:38, but I stopped it while I was jawing with the aid station workers and refilling my water bottle a few times. The winner was about a half hour ahead of me. He pulled ahead of me in the first 7 or 8 miles or so and I never saw him again.

I had no idea what to expect, given that I’ve never run more than 28 or 29 miles at once, only gone over 30 miles a few times between two runs, never raced more than 10k on trails (that were generally easier and flatter), never run more than 15 miles on trails before, was sick Friday night, and had a migraine the morning of the race.
(Click here to continue reading…)

I have decided that I want to run two marathons this Autumn, and I am already committed to running the Marine Corps Marathon. I found out about a new marathon in New Hampshire, the Manchester Marathon. This would be an ideal race to run, because we have friends in Manchester that we could stay with and it would be fun to run an inaugural race. The unfortunate part of the race is that it falls one week behind the Marine Corps Marathon.

The other marathon options in New Hampshire are the Clarence Demar and the New Hamsphire Marathon in Bristol. They are a week apart from one another, but are both a month before the Marine Corps Marathon.

The fourth option is to jump into my first ultramarathon. The Pisgah 50k Mountain Trail Race is in Western New Hampshire, it is over a month and a half before Marine Corps, and it would theoretically be easier to recover from a trail race than a road race.

Of course, the problems there are that I only have a month and a half to prepare for a race that is around 5 miles longer than the farthest that I have ever raced. It would also be the farthest that I have ever run on trails. I also do not know anybody that lives out that way that I could stay with before the race.

On one day’s contemplation, I am leaning towards either running at Pisgah or doing a couple of marathons back to back and running in Manchester. I am pretty sold on running in New Hampshire, since it is closer than Rhode Island and I have already run a marathon in the rest of the New England states. What are your thoughts? Are you running any of those races? What would you do in my shoes? Do you have any suggestions for races that I may have missed?