Christine Racine and Erin MooreMemorial Day Weekend is the official start to Tourist Season in Maine. What better way to celebrate that then by taking part in the Pineland Farms Festival of Running?

The Pineland Farms races began as a small event, and has grown to be a family friendly 2-day event that hosts around 1200 runners in 7 races.

Saturday begins with a 10k and canicross 5k, where the runners race while tied to the harnesses on their dogs. An hour later is the 5k and barefoot 5k, where runners can compete with naked feet or are allowed to compete in the “shod” division wearing minimal shoes such as Vibram Five Fingers, Merrell Trail Gloves, or (in my case) home-made huaraches. After the races are over there is a big BBQ, live entertainment, awards, and kid events such as an egg toss and 3 legged races.

On Sunday, there are 3 races. The 50 milers get started at 6:00 in the morning, which lets them take advantage of what little part of the day isn’t going to be sunny and hot. The 50k runners start 2 hours after them at 8:00, and the 25k runners begin at 10:00.

I had a great weekend of racing, bringing home a lot of hardware. In the barefoot 5k, I was 2nd overall but the first shod runner with my huaraches, and then in the 50k I thought I had finished just off of the podium with a 4th place finish.

Half an hour later, though, while waiting for my wife to finish the 25k, I saw one of the guys that I thought had beaten me come through and finish, which meant that I had in fact finished in 3rd place. I also had some great backup from the rest of my team, who won the 50k team race (as well as the 25k team race!)

Here’s my full rundown of the weekend:

Video Transcription

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There were a lot of great performances from a lot of people this weekend. As people get race reports up throughout the week, I’ll link to them here so that you can read about the races in everybody’s own words. I especially want to say congratulations to Val, Emma, Jeremy, Jamie, Cynthia, Linda, Bethany, Erin, Mary, Christine, Nate, Joe, Stephen, Theresa, and quite a few other people but my list of names could keep going for a long time.

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