Enjoying some trail mix

If people fall in love everyday, what happens when they do the opposite? Do they fall in hate?
Yeah, that’s dumb, but if there was such a thing, I can tell you the first time I fell in hate -- the first trail race I ever ran two years ago, the seventh annual Shawn M. Nassaney 5K at Bryant University in Smithfield.
I remember that race like it was last weekend because it’s the only time I fell three times in a race and one of the few 5Ks in the past couple of years that I ended up finishing near the 24-minute mark (23:53).
I knew the race was going to take place on a collegiate cross country course that had its share of grassy stretches and some challenging twists, turns, and hills in the woods. What I didn’t know when I signed up for it was that there was going to be a strong rain in the morning and a messy course to deal with that afternoon.
To make a long story short, I came home looking like it was the 1980s again and I was trudging home from a pickup football game at Maplewood Park in Fall River. I was muddy, bruised, and a little battered, all from tripping on a large root in the woods, then slipping on a loose rock, and with less than a quarter mile to go, taking a wild digger on an extra-wet grassy hill.
I remember promising myself on my short drive home that I was all set with trail races and I was sticking to races exclusively on good old asphalt.
And when I took the hour-and-40-minute drive to Milford, N.H. last Sunday to take part in the Ghost Train Rail Trail race, I remembered that 5K and my promise and wondered why in the world I was driving to New Hampshire at 6:30 a.m. to run in a tough 15-mile trail race.
The answer is simple -- I’m getting ready for the Barbados Marathon and I was looking for a nice 14-17 mile run in the morning. I could have went to my old reliable spots at Lincoln Woods, the East Providence-to-Bristol bike path, or the back roads of Scituate and Greenville to bang it out, but Bozena found this race on coolrunning.com and wanted to do it. I figured it’d be a lot different and more fun than your normal long-distance training route, so one thing led to another and off we went to the Granite State.
This was the second year of this race, and while last year’s race drew just 28 runners, this one had 63 finishers! Any time you see a race more than double its participants in its second year, that should tell you that the folks who run this race did something right that first year!
Anyway, this was a training run and I wasn’t going to focus on breaking two hours, so I hanged along the back of the pack and ran with Bozena. Neither one of us wanted to get lost, and even though there were lots of blue ribbons and white markings on the trees along the course, it could have been easy to do that because after four miles, it was a little tough to spot the runners in front and back of us in the woods.
Plus, I remembered that I did average a spill a mile at the Nassaney race, so I ran with caution and didn’t end up falling once. Rather, it was Bozena who took a tumble on the second mile! She landed on her wrist, but because she landed on some soft pine needles, she bounced back up and was good to go the rest of the way.
I had my moments stumbling on large roots sticking out of the ground and a rock or two, but other than that, nothing treacherous happened and I got an exceptional run. And I really enjoyed touring this course, the way the trees seemed to form a canopy above most of the course, the colorful foliage …
In a nutshell, here’s some things about the course. You had a short tunnel to run through during the first mile under Route 101, some, short challenging hills after that, a beautiful view of Lake Potanipo, more great scenery and an aid/water station at the “Four Corners” part of the race (at the 3½-/11½-mile mark), a quick ¾-mile run on a street, some more woods to run through, and a comfortable half-mile run on asphalt through a summer camp and toward a small covered bridge, where on the other side, there was the halfway point, another aid/water station, and someone tracking down the 7½-mile splits of the runners.
Most of the course took place on what used to be the Brookline and Milford railroad tracks from the late 19th and early 20th century. Back then, Granite was hauled from Milford and ice from Lake Potanipo to Massachusetts. The rails were eventually removed from the ground for scrap metal during World War II, but some of the railroad ties are still stuck in the ground, and if you look close enough, you could see them on the trail.
We were shooting to run 12-minute miles and finish this race in under three hours, and when we hit 1:30:21 at the halfway mark, I thought we were well on our way. But when Bozena started to crash a bit for the last two miles, we slowed down a bit until the end and ended up finishing in 3:08:56.
There were a ton of volunteers throughout the woods, on the streets, and at the aid/water stations, and when we finished (once you crossed a small gray bridge behind the start of the race at the Milford DPW), there were a dozen volunteers waiting for the rest of the runners to finish and cheering each one as they crossed the bridge.
In two weeks, I will be running another long-distance trail race surprisingly called the Air Line Trail Ghost Run -- mentioning these races back-to-back can be very confusing! It’s a half marathon that also exclusively takes place in the forest, but 10 miles of it is on a stonedust path and the other 3.1 miles is on the street. Again, you have lots of great scenery, but you don’t have the twists or turns of the Ghost Train Rail Trail race, nor do you have to worry about what’s under your feet when you run.
All in all, if I get the opportunity to run the Ghost Train Rail Trail race again next year, especially if I’m preparing for a late-year marathon, I’ll definitely do it again. It’s an eventful run that you don’t get everyday, and it just might make me fall out of hate with trail races!

Knee deep in the hoopla

Sometime last week, while I was aimlessly surfing the web during lunch, I noticed that a fellow runner hadn’t updated their blog since March, so I shot a quick e-mail to that person to see if they were alive and well.
And just seconds after I sent it, it dawned on me -- when was the last time I wrote anything on my blog? It’s been a month and a half and 10 races ago! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Well, it’s time for an update, so I’m just going to empty out my mind for the next several paragraphs or so. Here goes:

-- The first thing I have to say is that when I went grocery shopping at Super Stop & Shop last Wednesday night, I sniffed out the bargain bin and came across the No. 1 thing I need for running marathons -- the one thing that you can’t find at expos at Boston and Las Vegas, but you can buy at Super Stop & Stop, and if you’re lucky as I was, for only 75 cents …
… Charmin To Go bathroom tissue (55 sheets) in a nice pull-out dispenser that would fit great on the side of my running shorts!
As most folks know, I have a problem with old No. 2 when I run marathons (in seven out of my nine marathons, I have hit the Sani Can or any nearby woods). I usually carry a huge wad of toilet paper with me on my runs, but now that I will have this wonderful tool by my side, I feel like I can take on the world! I scooped up two of these babies and I’ll have one by my side when I run in the Barbados Marathon in December. Thank you very much, Charmin!

-- As you can see, I took a picture of one of the tubes (very light, fits in the palm of your hand), and also pictured with the tube is a bottle of Snapple’s Compassionberry Tea from this past spring’s Celebrity Apprentice. If you followed the show, you know that Bret Michaels, the lead singer of one of the greatest bands around, Poison, won the show in a very close battle with Holly Robinson Peete, and their final test on the show was to make a brand of Snapple that appealed to consumers.
Even though I wanted to see Holly lose and lose badly, I have to admit that the Compassionberry Tea she invented is extremely good, and that’s coming from a guy who doesn’t even like Snapple! It’s very tough to find this brand or Bret’s Troparocka Tea (I have never tried that and I have no idea where it is sold) and Compassionberry Tea hasn’t been on the shelves in a couple of months. But right after I discovered my Charmin To Go tubes, I lit up when I saw a six-pack sitting there in the aisle. I haven’t been that excited about a six-pack of anything since I was underage in college!

-- As I just said three paragraphs ago, I will be running in my 10th marathon, the Barbados Marathon on the first weekend of December. The air and hotel reservations are done, it’s just a matter of dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on the race application. And unlike the Boston Marathon, there’s no need to rush and get in my application -- 128 people registered for last year’s race.
I took a look at last year’s results and only 81 people finished. Two made it halfway through the race, but weren’t able to complete it, and who knows if the other 45 entrants ran, but didn’t get across the 13.1-mile mat to count in the results, decided not to run at all, etc.
The race starts at 4:30 a.m., but heat still figures to be a factor in this race as it progresses. But that’s OK. I’ll have my Charmin and Garmin nearby!
The good thing about this marathon is that I could have a truly terrible race, trudge across the line with a 4:40, and still finish 50th overall! Obviously, I want to do a lot better than that, but if things fall apart mid-race a la Boston, I can still save face and suck up a top-50 finish!

-- I vowed last year that I would never, ever run the UnitedHealthcare Half Marathon in Newport again, especially after what happened with the crazy Nor’easter that hit the area and the lack of shelter, bus transportation, and any help by the race directors to stay safe. But when the new race directors stepped in and offered my running club 40 percent off the registration fee, how could I say no, especially when you get to run a course as nice as the one this race offers?
I do have to say that this race was far and away better than last year’s event, and that’s not just because of the weather, which was sunny and a bit cool. There were more folks helping out with the race, at least 20 buses (not five) shuttling runners to and from the parking area, a beer tent with Harpoon and IPA brew, and lots of bagels, pizza, hot soup, water, and Gatorade, and more importantly, I got a feeling that everything was very well organized.
The only problem I had was not getting to the parking lot at Newport Grand (the former Newport Jai Alai) early enough to catch a bus that got me to the start on time. I showed up at Newport at 7:15 a.m., figuring I’d have enough time to get a bus, arrive, stretch out a little, and get somewhere close to the start. But instead, I ran right into a long line of cars trying to bottleneck it’s way into the parking lot, and by the time it was 7:50, I was finally boarding a bus.
When my bus arrived to the start and I jumped out of it, the race had started. I ran to the start, finally crammed my way into the start area, and began the race three minutes late. And things got a lot worse. I found myself having to duck, dodge, and weave around some of the slower runners in front of me, and having to run uphill for most of the first mile on the race’s new course didn’t help matters.
Once we hit the first mile marker, I checked my watch and saw a 9:43. For one mile!? Then I stepped on a cone that I didn’t see as I ducked past a wall of four runners (they may have been walkers) in the middle of the road and fell on my left arm, but I bounced right back up before I could get trampled or take anyone else down with me.
My second mile was 9:30 on the dot, but just before I could have an anxiety attack, the crowd began to filter out and I finally had room to run. My third mile was 8:47, I didn’t run a mile worse than 8:35 after that, and I ended up settling in with a 1:55:45 finish.
If there’s one thing I didn’t like about the race, it was the medals they gave out to the finishers. They were exactly two inches wide and an inch-and-a-quarter high. I just looked at all the medals I ever received at races and this is by far the smallest in my collection. When I wrapped it around my neck, I honestly had to look down and check to see if there was a medal attached to it because I thought it fell off! But nevertheless, this was a very, very good race, and yes, it’s in my good graces.