I did this race two years ago – last year it was postponed due to excess snow and I couldn’t make the new date, so I was excited to race it again.
The race director explained just how well marked the course was just before sending us off. It turns out he was 99% correct; there was only one intersection that wasn’t well marked. I – and the guys who ended up 2nd, 3rd, and 4th – all went straight at an intersection where we were supposed to go right – the course was marked on Wednesday and that piece of flagging tape fell down.
The trail turned out to reconnect to the course. We got some extra mud (the race is well named: moose tracks, plenty of mud, and a couple of turkeys were among the sights), bypassed the nice gravel road, and also skipped part of the biggest climb of the race. All in all, the alternate route was probably a wash in terms of total time.
It threw me off to be off course like that though, and I didn’t run the rest of the race as consistently as I would have liked. I did get a three minute win, but against a weaker field than I raced two years ago. And the race is supposed to be part of some big official series this year.
Oh well – the major goal was to get in a solid level three effort and thus to be better prepped for the 12 km road race I have coming up in 20 days, and I am feeling good about that one!

Went out yesterday and ran 10 time 400 meters: Times were 69 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 66 71.
That is faster than I was on the track at the start of June last summer.
So there are two possibilities: I am more fit than last year and have a chance to develop a solid base and run some superfast times late this summer, or I am getting greedy, burning myself out with too much speed too fast, and am in for some painful, ugly races in a couple of months.

Stay tuned to find out which!

For whatever reason, I am actually happy to be done with ski season. And running season is beginning. I have lofty hopes for this season: I want to run 14:45 for 5 km, 24:30 for 5 miles, and sub-31:00 for 10 km. Along the way I would like to finish first American at a USATF-NE Championship, presumably in the 5 mile or 10 km distance next September.
So yesterday’s workout was important. I got on the track (last year I couldn’t due to the deep snow still covering it) and cranked out some 200s and 400s. The 200s were 34 and 35, the 400s were mostly 70. This is faster than my (later) debut last year, but given that I am hoping to hold a pace of sub-71 for 5000 meters, doing this for 400 meters doesn’t mean much! Still, as the title of my post indicates, my first workout puts me on track to meet all my goals for the season. Such is the beauty of the first day out.

Ski season is over, and while my own competitive focus is shifting to running, I am actually spending more time coaching cycling. Yesterday we started with hill training. We almost didn’t, as it was 40 degrees and raining, but when I saw that it was just a hard drizzle (an opinion shared by no one else) I concluded that it was a great day to hammer up hills.
The other coach was happy to agree, and noted that he depends on me to be the voice of reason and to rein him in when he wants to train in excessive harsh weather.
I’ve never been accused of being a reasonable person when it comes to picking days to train. It could be a long, cold spring for our athletes.
They’re tough, though. Once they stepped out of the bike room into the rain I didn’t hear a single complaint. If it doesn’t stop raining today by 3:00 we will have to pay them back by taking it easy.