Curly's record run - 4 mile snowshoe race

Curly's Race Profile....This is going to HURT

When it really comes down to it, racing is all about numbers.  Today I tallied a whole bunch of numbers.  I traveled out to Pittsfield, MA for Curly's record run.  Below is a run down of just some of the numbers.

300 Miles driven to and from the race.

5 AM  Time I woke up 

6 AM  Time I left for the race

5 hours travel time.

86 racers

1 BIG hill

1 Curly

4 Daughters

4 miles running through trails

700 foot climb in less then 1 mile

800 foot decent in less then 1 mile

A whole lot of pain

So my plan was to travel out to Pittsfield, MA to run this race.  After doing some research I realized that my travel time was going to eat most of the day.  Oh well the things we do for a new experience.  My plan was to leave at 6 AM and show up by 8:30.  The plan worked, well almost perfectly.  When I started out this morning I punched in Pittsfield into my GPS.  All was going perfectly until I reached Pittsfield.  I could see the Pittsfield state forest on the map but the GPS

 didn't show any roads.  So I had to watch the GPS and take turns based on where I though the race started from.  I only have good news, my plan worked.

Once I located the start area I jumped out of the car and VERY QUICKLY realized it was cold, extremely cold.  I ran over to the sign in table and met Curly.  Curly has no hair.  He explained that he has 4 daughters so he pulled it all out.  I only have 2 daughters but I fully understood. 

It was time to warm up so I threw on my Yaktrax and headed up the mountain.  After only 3 minutes I was sucking wind.  This course was going to be tough.  I soon turned around and headed back down to find a porta potty.  Guess what? They had thousands of them.  They call them trees.   After my meeting with Mother Nature it was time to get ready to race.  It was cold but sunny so I ended up with my usual base layer with a Hot Chillies top and ROAG biking vest.  Top it all off with a Dion fleece hat and a pair of sun glasses and I was good to go.  Hold on one more thing.  After talking with a bunch of people I decided to put on a longer set of cleats on my snowshoes, because I was told that the back side of the mountain was steep so you needed to be able to dig in to slow you down.  

The two peaks in the back ground are the mountains we ran up.

Anyway the start time was nearing and I was ready.  I was getting nervous because I kept hearing how tough the climb was and how dangerous the back side was.  The good news it's the same for everyone. 

After a 5 minute delay we were ready to start.  One of Curly's daughters gave us final instructions and Curly blew the starting whistle.  We were off, and we were climbing right away.  Everyone quickly sorted them selves out and we were running on single track.  Passing was not an option without the person in front of you letting you go by.  After 12 minutes my heart was ripping out of my chest and all of a sudden I tripped and was down on the ground but was able to pop up quickly.  I was tracking behind Bob Dion of the famous Dion Snowshoe's, and all of a sudden he stops and lets me pass.  Of course I passed but I was ready to walk.  1 minute later I was reduced to a crawl.  At the 18 minute mark Bob is now telling me about one year where there was waist deep snow and it took him over an hour to reach the top.  One thing I remember Double-D saying to me at the start was that the leaders should hit the top within 20 minutes.  That meant I was still a long way off.  I was dieing a slow and painful death.  When we finally reached the top Bob went by me and was starting to fly down the mountain.  I was trying my best to keep up but with all the switch backs I wasn't able to take the corners in control.  At about half way down it happened.   I went crashing to the ground and started to tumble.  After what seemed to be an eternity I popped back up to my feet and was back on the trail.  Bob was now out of sight and another guy was on my tail.  When we reached the bottom of the mountain we had 1 mile to go and the guy on my tail decided to make his move and pass me.  I just let him go to see if I could regroup and make one final push and pass him back with 200 yards left.  As we went over the roller coaster terain the guy fell but was up again quickly.  However I knew I owned him, he was tired and I was just waiting for a good point to pass.  With about 1/4 mile left to go I made my move and passed him and never looked back.  I tried to finish with a smile because they had a camera at the line, but all I could manage was a grimace.  

I walked around a little bit but was in no mode to do a cool down run.  After a couple of minutes I as back to normal and got my place and time.   I was 19th overall and ran a 41:32 for 11:11 per mile.  I ended up 4th in the 50 - 59 age category.  

Next weekend Cobble Mountain in Gilford.