10.  Eating dinner in the hotel room Friday night and watching Criminal Minds with Lefty

9.   Meeting up with Lost C before the race and getting some great photo’s [Read more...]

We just returned from the closing banquet. Feels like the end of summer camp. The facts: after stage 1 we were 13th out of 23 teams and after 6 stages we finished 8th out of 21 teams in our division, including finishing 7th the last three stages. Got stronger every day, amazing what the body can do! More important than the facts is the experience. Impossible to put in words. Home tomorrow, tired, sore and proud!

Given the events of the past week, most would probably suggest that I NOT run any race with the name Breakneck 20K.  That was fine with me because after 2 years of running the course with my girl Ticket the novelty of no trail markings, beaver dam crossings and never knowing if we were on the course or not, had frankly lost its appeal.  But given my recent list of injuries and the fact that I had not run a race since Escarpment, I woke up last Saturday contemplating the possibility of going back for round 3.  [Read more...]

There is nothing easy about taking on the Escarpment Trail 30k. Suds, Shelly Girl and I left from the Killingworth Traffic Circle at 4:a.m. We needed to make it to North Lake Campground in Haines Falls New York in time to catch the bus to the start. For the first hour there was torrential rain, which was not only difficult to drive in but made us all wonder if this was foreshadowing as to what the race would be like. [Read more...]

Okay, so the race is called Seven Sisters and I believe, though I lost track somewhere along the way, there are actually only seven peaks we went over.  Since you have to run out and back shouldn’t  this race really be called Seven Sisters plus their twins? And nobody mentions the numerous, and I do mean numerous, quasi and false summits one must traverse to get to the end of this challenging run.  From now on I think I will call those the secret cousins that nobody wants to talk about.  Sort of the black sheep of the family. Wow, what a family! [Read more...]

Okay, how is one brief when you pack a 22.5k race, major shopping , a run up and down  the most climbed mountain in the USA and a taste of a Grand Tree 50k course into one report? I will do my best.

First, the Grand Tree series Diamond Hill 22.5K

Shellygirl and I arrived about 1 hour ahead of the start.  The Diamond Hill/ Birchwold 22k was the first step in our annual fall get-a-way.  We knew it  would be an interesting race when we went up to the Haunted House ticket booth to register. Great shirts and a race day entry fee of $20 made us feel like we got our monies worth before we even started. [Read more...]

8:00 Sunday morning.  Shellygirl and I drove up to the Killingworth traffic circle to meet Iggy and Ticket at the commuter parking lot and then head up to tackle the Breakneck 20K.  It seems Iggy had a rough night, unfortunately all work related, and decided to skip the festivities.  She still met us just to say she was not going. What a good girl!

Shortly after 8 we began the hour drive up to Bigelow State Park to tackle one of the more interesting races around. The three of us have all had some previous experience with races in this part of the world, with Shellygirl and I having run the Nipmuck and the Northen Nipmuck races and Shellygirl and Ticket running the Breakneck last year. [Read more...]