HAVRE DE GRACE Maryland, March 22 2014

The HAT Run or, as it’s known in our house, the 모자 is a very popular 50k race. Entry is capped at 500 and fills up within a few hours. The race is popular for good reason.

The course is beautiful, mostly single track trail but with some road and open, grassy field sections thrown in. There is a fair amount of elevation gain (the website claims almost 10,000 feet, but my watch recorded a paltry half mile or so).

I had been concerned that the trails would be a sloppy mess. There had been several inches of snow just five days earlier, on top of many similar accumulations throughout the winter. Amazingly, though, a few days of bright sun and warm temperatures had dried the trail out beautifully – there was only a very few small muddy patches, and the stream crossings were not more than ankle deep.

As I was receiving my packet from a kind volunteer I saw someone reaching across me to grab some bib-pinning safety pins. This turned out to be the famed zhurnalist Mark Zimmermann, whose site is one of my favorite places to read race reports (and more!). I would see Mark again at the finish, just as I was leaving. I called out “Looking good, Mark!”, and he expressed appreciation for the sentiment although I’m sure he had no clue who I was.

The HAT Run course consists of one small loop of about 3.6 miles followed by two identical longer loops measuring some 13.7 miles each. At the end of the first loop I noticed that we were running directly under the finishing arch. “That’s a little too much of a tease,” I complained to the woman beside me, earning a grin and a nod. In the end we would go under that arch three times, with only the last time counting.

There was an aid station set up in the start/finish area, since we’d be through there three times, but I skipped this the first time through. It was only some four miles to the next AS, and since the weather started out cool I had plenty of water left in my bottle.

There were three aid stations on the big loop, the last one being a couple of simple, unmanned jugs of water. The first two were actually only some 50 feet apart as the crow flies, although separated on the course by some 4.1 miles. The GPS track from my watch shows the pinch in the course in the northernmost area. Both of these aid stations were serving up what instantly became by far my favorite ultra food ever: freshly cooked french fries. They were hot, crisp, salty, and invigorating. I just completely fell in love with those fries.

I learned in this race that every ultra runner in the area loves the VHTRC races. It seemed like everyone I spoke with had run BRR or MMT, or was planning to run at least one of them this year.

I got to talking for a while with G. when I noticed that he and I were wearing the same model shoe – the Altra Olympus. G. will be running his second MMT this year, and I tried to pick his brain a little in support of my own first attempt on it. He warned me that there were very few runnable sections, but then he went on to say that he probably ran about 50% of the course. He also told me that he was planning to run 45 miles around his native Philly the day after the 31 miles of the HAT. Up until that point I’d been pleased with myself for planning a half marathon as a HAT follow-up; now I started to doubt whether I had anywhere near the training needed to achieve an MMT finish.

G. got up ahead of me for a while, and with about four miles left to go I found myself running alone for some time. I eventually caught up to S., a guy with a French-sounding accent who I later learned had finished shortly behind me at last year’s BRR. We ran together for a couple miles, eventually falling in at the end of a conga line of some 5 or 6 runners muddling their way up a hill. We stayed with that line for a little while, hiking a few ups and running a few flats, but it was moving just a little slow for my taste. I finally took an opportunity to zip around to the left as we went up yet another hill, noting with some surprise that G. was one of the conga line constituents.

I picked off a few more runners as the trail opened up into a sunny, grassy field. Then came a screaming, paved downhill where I really opened up the pace, moving up another place or two.

Then a little more single track before the course opened up and headed out through fields and road to the finish. Third time though the arch was the charm, and I finished in 6:38:45. I was pretty close to finishing in the top half of the results; I was in the top half if you include DNFs.

As long as they keep serving those french fries this will be a hard race for me to skip.

Miles this race: 31
Miles raced this year: 79.6

CHESTERFIELD Virginia, March 15 2014

“I’m like a bad penny,” I said to Columbia as I came up behind, “I keep turning up.”

I’d met him in the first quarter mile of the race, before the field got separated out. I was asking someone else if they knew what the trails were like. That person didn’t know, but I heard someone call out that he thought they were mainly fire roads. I made my way over to chat with that latter guy a little more. We discussed the race course for a little while, then he asked where I was from. “Manassas,” I said, “you?” “Columbia Maryland.”

We ran and chatted for the next couple miles. The brutal winter had destroyed my already questionable fitness, and I knew I needed to keep a slow pace if I wanted to have any hope of a strong finish. The race’s elevation chart tended to confirm this analysis.

The trails actually turned out to be a mix of fire roads, double track and a couple miles of gorgeous, flowy single track, which put me in mind of the good old BROT and was by far the most joyful section to run.

We started out running in the 8:30 to 9:00 range. I knew I needed to back off of this pace, but the weather was perfect, and the course was beautiful. I could never have imagined it during my sedentary years, the idea of running being too pleasurable to stop or even moderate my pace, but the legs will have their way and so I spent a few miles telling Columbia to go on ahead, as I was going to slow down a bit, but never actually following through.

Eventually we got to the first truly hilly area, and I was finally able to persuade my legs that I needed them to walk the ups. Columbia got up ahead here, but the walking break had the desired revitalizing effect, and I caught him again before too long.

This pattern repeated itself several times over the next six or seven miles. I’d get dropped on the ups, and then catch up where the course was flat or down. He’d always greet me with a hearty “Manassas!” He was usually running with a group when I caught him and there’d be introductions all around. I met D., who was running this race as part of a double this weekend – he would go on to run sub-four at the Shamrock Virginia Beach Marathon the next day. I met a young lady from Northern Virginia, apparently running her first 26.2, who was introduced to me as “Prancer”.

After mile 9 or 10 Columbia put enough of a gap on me that I couldn’t catch him before the next uphill. At around mile 11.5 I saw him at the race’s sole out-and-back section, he some 50 yards past the turnaround, and I the same distance short of it. Then he was gone.

I chatted with several other interesting runners, though. Most of them were ultra runners. One young woman had recently run all three days of the West Virginia Trilogy – a 50k on Friday, 50 miles on Saturday, and a half marathon on Sunday. She said the trails were breathtaking. Several people I spoke with had run the Bull Run Run, or were planning to. I pimped it every chance I got.

I continued walking the ups and running the downs. Through the first 15 miles I was keeping just over a 10 minutes per mile average, which would put me under my ambitious goal time. I was at 18 miles in the neighborhood of 3:04, and was cautiously optimistic about a sub-4:30 finish.

In every previous marathon I’ve run, I’ve found myself crashing in the last 6 miles and getting passed by huge waves of runners. Today was the opposite. Buoyed by my run-walk strategy, I was passed by no one after about mile 12. In fact I was methodically picking off exhausted runners ahead of me. I must have passed around ten or twelve people in the last ten miles, in a race with fewer than 100 finishers.

Eventually I saw a familiar figure just rounding a curve up ahead. I upped my cadence a little and eventually caught up to Columbia for the last time around mile 20 or 21. He had had to take a pit stop at the last aid station, and was complaining of fatigue and cramps. I was slowing too, but I tried to convince him we could still bring it in under four and a half. He wasn’t buying in to this plan though. We ran and chatted a little, and then I got up ahead.

I got to the last aid station and declared “This must be the finish line!” This got a chuckle from the volunteers. “No, but you’re getting close. A mile to go, or maybe 1.2.” “It’s 1.13 according to this,” I replied, pointing to a helpful sign nearby. “I’ll take every hundredth I can get.”

I generally hate walking in the last mile of a race, no matter the distance, and I tried to adhere to this philosophy today. They’d thrown some of the nastiest hills in the last few tenths here, however, and I wound up giving in and trudging up them. Soon enough I found myself crossing the bridge back to the finish area and spied the finish line up ahead. With a few hundred feet to go there was one runner between me and the arch, and I set out to take him. He looked a little beat, and I passed him pretty quickly, but as I started my finishing kick across the field my calves started seizing up with cramps. I managed to grit my teeth and hold off the cramps for the 100 or so yards to the finish, and the pass was not reversed.

I missed my ambitious goal, but did better than I expected to. My time was 4:37:10, 38th out of 94 finishers, and the first time I’ve finished in the top half of a marathon field.

I hung around to watch the later finishers. Columbia came across the line some ten minutes after me. “My name’s McArdleRay,” I said, offering him my hand, “What’s yours?” “DavisSteve,” he replied, shaking it.

There were several noteworthy things about this race. Among them:

• Before the marathon started, the race director announced that we had a Guinness world record holder in the field. Laurence Macon holds the record for most marathons run in one year with 157(!). Laurence finished DFL today, but he’s got nothing at all to prove.
• The signage was amazing. At every turn – and at occasional places with no turns – there was a laminated sign on a tree or stuck in the ground with the current distance to the hundredth of a mile for both the full and (where applicable) the half marathon.
• They had an unusual chip timing system. You crossed the finish line, then walked down to the end of the chute, where a volunteer waved a sensor on a paddle over your bib. This added some 20 seconds to my net time, but, meh, it’s not a PR type of race anyway.

This race is beautiful, well organized, and very well supported for its size. The marathon field is small, but there were around 2 or 3 times as many in the half. I hope to come back in the future.

Miles this race: 26.2
Miles raced this year: 48.6