Wachusett Mountain

Kristen and I rolled into the Wachusett parking lot about 8:40 in the Gti. I had 50 minutes to grab my number, warm up, and make a pit stop. I ran into Tim Mahoney and Todd Callaghan on the warm up. I have not seen Tim in a while and he’s been racing very well recently. Meanwhile, Todd was so far satisfied with a pair of Nike Lunar Racer's that are usually for the roads and was going to give them a test run on this mix of road and trail today. Not before long, we were getting pre-race instruction from former CMS President Kevin Fallon. At this point, Dave Dunham almost tackled me for a greeting. It is great to see Dave lacing the flats up again and getting into races. We ran the D5K (Danvers weekly fun run) on Wednesday. It will not be long before he is whipping us in the mountain races. The start went off and I casually slid into twentieth place or so about 400m into the immediate climb up to the entrance of the auto road. The course was the same as last year, minus the last .10 of a mile around the duck pond. Mile one passed and I glanced at the watch without any effort to see the split. I carried on into the entrance trailing Ryan Aschbrenner from GBTC. Ryan was tuning up along with Ted Breen who are both racing the Mount Washington Road Race next month.

I caught Ryan at the end of the single track trail heading past the lodge. We began a climb into mile two. Bob Jackman pulled along side and I followed. A left hand turn into Old Indian Trail brought about the steepest part of the trail. Bob did a solid job, keeping a steady effort running up and I focused to stay as close as I could. Mile three passed and I was definitely feeling better at this point this year than last year. I know I went out quicker last year, but this just felt right today. We exited the trail, found pavement and knew the rest of the course was pretty much downhill – almost two miles worth. Only two seconds behind Bob, I told him to “let ‘er fly, it’s all downhill from there.” We would not separate more than a stride all the way down. We exchanged the pacing at least twice. We caught a younger gent on the way down and were reeling in Ross Krause with about 800m to go. Our strides seemed to be all out when Bob found another gear with about 100 yards to go. I had nothing left, finishing three ticks behind him for a 33:14 and 15th place in a very competitive field this year.

CMS folks represented very well with Kevin Tilton, Andy McCarron, Jim Johnson, Tim Van Orden, Tim Mahoney all finishing in the top 12. John Kinnee, Sam Wood, Jeff Goupil, and Bryan Johnston were not too far behind me and ran solid races. My Garmin measured 5.08 miles today. Someone said the course was touted to be 5.2 miles on the application. Either way, I would say everyone enjoyed themselves on a fair mountain course. This was the second race of the USATF-New England Mountain series and I am sure there will be at least 100 mountain goats by the time Ascutney (VT) is finished in July. I missed Northfield Mountain last week so it won’t happen to this guy in 2010.

Post race included some a Polar drink, bagel, and a banana. Scott Mason and I caught up on serious training that was done when he was a young stud ripping up the roads. He was heading up the VCM - Vermont City Marathon after the race to take some photos. Here is a plug for Justin Fyffe who is going to surprise some folks tomorrow.

Big thanks to Wachusett for hosting the race, CMS for organizing the race, Polar Beverages, and Kristen for her company and photos. She took over 150 photos. Scott Mason should have a ton set up as well soon. Looking ahead, I will be running the Rhody 5K, Market Square 10K, and the Mount Washington Road Race in the near future. If I feel good on Monday and have nothing going on, I may jump into the Dory Run 5K with Dennis Floyd.