Mount Greylock Road Race

The email for the 8 mile road race mentioned Mount Greylock as the highest point, 3,491 feet, in Massachusetts. This appealed to me and I never been to the mountain so I was all in as long as it did not put a big dent into my Labor Day weekend. The race was part of the Mountain Series so I was bound to see a lot of CMS runners.

I picked up Dave Dunham on Saturday afternoon and we drove a bit less than 3 hours to Field Farm in Williamstown. We ran four miles with Tim Van Orden. At the end of the run, we sampled the apples. An hour later we visited Olympic Pizza for dinner. I grabbed a pint of ice cream on the way back to the hotel.  

I was up at 5:04AM, before any alarm. Dave and I walked to Dunkin Donuts for coffee. The race was less than 10 minutes away so we had plenty of time to reach the 8:30 start. There were over a dozen CMS runners milling around getting bib numbers and warming up. Colin Carroll filled me in on the secret Williams College training in the mid-2000’s which included some Greylock intervals. I ran a 2 mile warm up with David Lapierre and Dave. Numbers for the race were over 250 strong, well up from the 187 finishers with rain last year.

I got on the front row at the starting line. I had echoes of “miles two and three are tough” given to me from Tivo and Dave. They were spot on. A used a bit of caution in there trying not to red line. The course lightened up in the second half, offering some flat sections and downhill which surprised me as it did not amplify while looking at the course profile a few weeks ago. Paulo from SRR was the only runner I would pass after 4 miles. I could see Chris Smith (SRR) and Brian Ruhm (Gate City) over the last three miles but all I could do was get 5 seconds of Brian on the last climb to the finish which was 150 yards from the summit. I placed 17^th with a time of 1:03:08.07. Now I have a time to beat next year. I got 7.69 miles on the GPS so keep that in mind if you decide to run the race for the first time in the future. 2018 Mount Greylock Road Race results

JAMES PAWLICKI
43rd Annual Mt. Greylock Road Race
Overall: 17 out of 286
Male 40 - 49: 2
Time: 01:03:08.07
Pace: 7:53/mile
Speed: 7.6mph

Top 20 runners from the 2018 Mount Greylock Road Race

1 TURNER ZAMORE 238 00:53:11.62 6:39 9.0mph M 34

2 CAMERON COGBURN 377 00:56:21.80 7:03 8.5mph M 32

3 COLIN CARROLL 230 00:56:23.94 7:03 8.5mph M 33

4 MARK RABASCO 407 00:57:51.51 7:14 8.3mph M 24

5 TODD CALLAGHAN 358 00:58:08.91 7:16 8.3mph M 48

6 ERIK VANDENDRIES 336 00:58:11.02 7:16 8.2mph M 53

7 TIM VAN ORDEN 392 00:58:54.51 7:22 8.1mph M 50

8 BRANDYN NARO 315 00:59:11.95 7:24 8.1mph M 31

9 DAVE DUNHAM 328 00:59:56.53 7:29 8.0mph M 54

10 MEGHAN DAVIS 387 01:00:40.27 7:35 7.9mph F 16

11 HEATH BREWER 282 01:00:52.08 7:36 7.9mph M 34

12 KASSANDRA MARIN 406 01:01:29.05 7:41 7.8mph F 28

13 MICHAEL NARCISI 322 01:01:57.11 7:45 7.7mph M 34

14 KIM NEDEAU 242 01:02:32.25 7:49 7.7mph F 39

15 CHRISTOPHER SMITH 308 01:02:40.20 7:50 7.7mph M 52

16 BRIAN RUHM 391 01:03:03.32 7:53 7.6mph M 52

17 JAMES PAWLICKI 331 01:03:08.07 7:53 7.6mph M 43

18 PAULO AMARAL 295 01:04:00.11 8:00 7.5mph M 37

19 DAVID CORBETT 228 01:05:06.91 8:08 7.4mph M 34

20 DAVID LAPIERRE 264 01:05:34.51 8:12 7.3mph M 54