This past Saturday was the North Shore Trail Race, held in Lawrence, at the Clinton Lake trails. The event is run/promoted by The Trail Nerds, a local trailrunning group that always has fun events and has a race director that sets the bar against which all others are measured in my mind. In the future, I will discuss him and the flip side of the coin, a local race director who hopefully will choose a new career path in the next few years.
The trail race was only and $8 entry fee and instead of a race T-shirt, you received a race bandanna. I, for one, like events that have anything other than a white t-shirt. I already have a hundred white t-shirts… give me a hat, bandanna, colored shirt or anything else please. (One of many areas the Trail Nerds always get the gold medal in!)
I had never run the trails, but my fellow runacrosskansas runner, Danny, talked to some other runners who had informed him that it was a rooty run. Seeing as how my best race ever was the Psycho Wyco, run by the trail nerds on a rooty/rocky/hilly course, I arrogantly decided I would run near the front and see what I could do.
When the race gun fired, a group of seven broke away from the pack fairly early and I ran in sixth place for a mile, then picked off a few guys over the next mile as I wanted to keep the lead group of two in my sights. These guys where really hauling it and I foolishly ran their pace, until about the third mile where I was keeping pace but feeling fatigued and therefore, running with poor form and even poorer footing choices. I stepped on a root and semi-rolled my ankle. It wasn’t enough to cause any pain, but enough to scare me into running the next mile at a slower pace to make sure I could finish strong. A few guys passed me and I had to suppress my ego, and tell myself that injury avoidance was more important, and I had run stupid out of the gate and now had to pay the penance. When we came to the five and a half mile mark, I felt like I could pick it up and did so, but only slightly. With two miles left, I could hear a guy behind me and actually caught a glimpse of him on a switchback section. He was probably 20-30 seconds behind me with two miles left. I didn’t want to get passed again, so I decided to run the rooty decents smart, push the uphill sections and smoke the flat, muddy sections. Luckily, there were a couple of long sections where I really put some speed down and had good footing. When I came out of the woods and crossed the fields, he was nowhere to be seen, so my plan had worked. About 45 seconds later, he came through, and I could see my motivator. I was proud that I had put such a nice gap on him in only two miles, but amazed, because he was at least 25 years my senior. I hope to be just running for fun by that point, but hats off to all you guys with the grey hair who still can push (and sometimes beat) us young guys.
The Trail Nerds deserve credit for another great race.
