Catching Up - Part I - Tuckfest 2016

The last two months have been pretty hectic between work and wedding planning thus...here we are again. Another long stretch with no blogs. Sad face. I actually have three or four different blogs that I've started but haven't been able to finish but I'm forcing myself to sit down and catch up on what's been going on. Mainly a bunch of races with a couple of adventures thrown in for good measure.

Three days of outdoor sports, music, and beer in North Carolina. Sign me up. Tuckfest weekend has marked on my calendar after stumbling on this gem of a festival last year. It kicks off Friday with a couple of bands and a few low key events like a family adventure race, kids races, a twilight 5k and some stand up paddle boarding before really getting under way on Saturday with trail races, mountain bike races, whitewater kayaking, flatwater kayaking, climbing, bouldering, bands, beers and probably a few other things that I missed.

All of the events take place at the US National Whitewater Center just outside of Charlotte. Amanda and I made the three hour trek from Atlanta to Charlotte on Friday night, skipping the festivities that night in order to try and get some sleep before the race. In the morning we made the short drive over to USNWC where I grabbed my number and wristband and started my prep. Tuck Fest is a really cool event in that once you pay the registration, you are free to enter as many events as you want. Obviously, there are a few events that require proof of skills - whitewater kayaking, top rope climbing, things like that.

Going into the race, I spent some time going over the course but it was pretty much that same as last year with a small exception at the start. On my warm up, I worked my way around that area and found out that the race opened with 400-600 meters on a dirt road before dipping into the woods. Good for me, since it would give me a chance to see how people were going to go out. I didn't really know what to expect from the field. Last year this was a La Sportiva Mountain Cup race so that brought out a heavy hitter or two. It wasn't a mountain cup race this year, but the USNWC has a half marathon series, so I didn't really know who would show up.

Coming off of the 1:16 half that I ran at Peach Jam, I felt pretty confident that I'd be able to run at the front, but that race was on a flat greenway. After an easy two mile warm up, I switched shoes (La Sportiva Mutants - great shoe but the course was a little hard packed for them) and made my way to the start.

At the gun, I went right to the front and quickly settled into a good tempo, which was about the same pace that I'd run at Peach Jam the week before. I felt confident that I could go out a little harder and back off once I got into the woods with that race under my belt, so I decided to go for it and try to see how the rest of the field would react. I was a little bit surprised that no one went out with me at the start and 200 meters into the race I was already on my own out front.

Once I entered the woods, I tried to settle in a little bit and just keep stretching things out. The course is definitely more challenging that it appears. Last year was a complete mudfest so I wasn't really thinking about the time I ran. I figured that I'd be way faster since it was dry. To my surprise the course had some real bite to it, or it was long. One of the two.

The course is two laps of a six point something loop, with a one lap race starting 30 minutes after the half marathon. The first few miles are very bumpy. No big elevation changes but a lot of short, steep climbs. It was also a little more technical than I remembered with scattered roots and rocks. Once things straighten out a little, probably around four miles in, it's a little less punchy. There is one substantial climb up to the power lines but other than that I found the second half of the lap to be a little more forgiving than the first.

I felt pretty strong on the first lap. I moved through the early miles well and then really got into a good rhythm on the back half. After about five miles, I took a couple peeks back but couldn't see anyone so I relaxed a little bit and told myself to try and maintain through the rest of the race. I rolled through the first lap in 50:28 with what I assumed was a substantial lead.

Despite what I felt like was a little bit of a slow lap, when considering the effort, I felt fairly comfortable heading into the second lap. It also seemed like it might have been a little long, but I'm not going to be that guy that says 'my GPS says the race is really 14 miles' I think the course has a lot more bite than bark.

After cruising along for the first two miles of the second lap I started catching up to the tail end of the quarter marathon (one lap race). This wasn't as frustrating as last year, but I still had a couple of issues getting by people. Most were encouraging and worked with me when it came to passing, but I got a couple of dirty looks and one guy (unintentionally) caught me with an elbow in the ribs in one of the narrower sections.

The up and down and constant passing really started to take a toll on me after about four miles on the second lap. Even when things opened up a little bit I was firmly planted on the struggle bus. I glanced at my watch a couple times and figured that I was in for a really slow second lap. I tried to focus on catching the people in front of me but that became more mentally exhausting than encouraging as the miles wore on.

Once I crested the climb up to the power lines I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me. I was only about a mile from the finish and as long I kept moving forward I was going to get the win. It was such a different experience from the week before. At Peach Jam I felt completely comfortable and in control for 95 percent of the race. I had a couple of short rough patches but even at the end I felt like I was running very relaxed. Tuckfest was the total opposite. Some of that is probably due to the drastic difference in courses, but mostly I don't think I factored in cumulative fatigue (that's another blog for another day).

I made the final turn onto the last section of gravel road and picked off a few more of the one lap racers ready to cross the finish and enjoy my victory for the rest of the day. I crossed the line in 1:41 , just about even splits. Not bad considering my second lap felt at least 20 minutes slower. With a smile on my face, I started scanning the crowd for Amanda when I heard one of the guys at the finish line say...

"Did you just finish the half marathon?"
"Yeah."
"Nice job bro, second place."
"Ah, what? Not possible. No one passed me."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I led from the first step and never got passed, so it's not possible for me to have finished second." - That's how it sounded in my mind but in reality it was probably more like "No. Can't. First." - Cut me some slack I just ran a half marathon.

If this is starting to sound familiar, that means you read this blog, so first thanks, and second yes this happened last year. In last year's race I was second the whole way behind La Sportiva's Ryan Woods. I ran with him for a few miles then he dusted me. He won but in the process he had to pass the guy that "finished second" some where on the second lap. When I came in they gave me third. Fortunately Ryan helped me straighten it out since the only way the guy could have gotten in front of him was to cut the course.

Flash forward to this year and we have almost the same situation. Admittedly, I was pretty salty about it. I try to be diplomatic at all times when I'm at races. I know the RD and the volunteers work hard to make sure everyone has a good experience, but two years in a row of someone cutting the course and getting away with it did not sit well with me.

I did my best to calmly plead my case for winning. I felt like I had pretty solid evidence. I was leading by a wide margin, which someone had to see, and I ran even splits, so in order to beat me this dude would have had to run major negative splits. That's not impossible, but it seemed pretty unlikely to me. I was a little worried that maybe I screwed up and ran long, but I ran even splits so again that was pretty unlikely.

The RD asked if we tracked the race. We both had, cutty mccutterson on his iPhone and me on my Garmin. He decided he'd take a look at the GPS maps and make a decision after that. I had to walk to the car and grab my phone, which turned out to be a good thing. On the way to the car, I was heated. I was ready to leave and say I was never coming back. Amanda must have really enjoyed my bitch sesh.

By the time we made it back I calmed down and showed the RD my phone. He compared the two and immediately realized that the other guy cut a section of the course. The RD says "I have to DQ you, give me a minute" and he walked away. At this point the other guy goes, "Sorry bro, the same thing happened to me last year."

Get a load of that shit...it was the SAME GUY! The same dude that cut the course last year cut the course again this year. WTF. It's not a hard course to follow either. How does that happen?

Looking back, I made a mistake by not spending the extra money to get a chip, so I'd have an official time, but I'm not running in their race series so it seemed like a waste of 10 bucks. This other guy though, he was running in the series so I got a peek at his splits. Homeboy ran 52:15 for the first lap - pretty solid - then 46:10 for his second lap. He cut out six minutes, nearly a minute per mile. According to Strava, I was 50:25 and 50:36 for 1:41.

I was happy to get everything sorted out and once I cooled down a little bit, both literally and figuratively, things were - as Local H said - copacetic. It didn't dawn on me until a little while later, because I was being selfish, but the guys that got second and third nearly got hosed too. They were definitely happy to have things figured out before the awards though.

We each got a man can of Bell's Oberon and a cool medal with the guitar logo on it. The beer was excellent by the way. It paired very well with the tacos I had later.

Here's what the race looked like on Strava:

 After the race Amanda and I walked around and checked out all of the vendor tents, played some corn hole, tried out slackline (only about four inches off the ground). We grabbed some food and beer and found a spot along the side of the whitewater course and watch people hitting the rapids in kayaks, rafts and on SUP boards.

An awesome day

We listened to some cool music and relaxed for a couple hours before we decided to hit the whitewater ourselves. I was hoping to enter the Tuckfest photo/video contest but we're still working on Amanda's shooting (she loves the vertical shot) and I didn't realize there are a few settings you need to adjust when you are shooting in slo-mo on the iPhone. Next time I'll stick to the GoPro. I did get some good stuff from whitewater rafting that I'll have to put in a video later, but I digress.

Whitewater rafting was AWESOME. Amanda was a little nervous when they started telling us to expect to fall out of the boat, but we ended up with a good group and some how all stayed out of the water. We started off with a couple of runs down the class 2 and 3 rapids, which were like the green circle sections. We got soaked pretty early on, but once that was done with it seemed like everyone relaxed a little.

After a couple runs down the easier sections we tackled the black diamonds. I'll admit I was a bit nervous going down those. I figured I'd probably end up in the water and told myself to remain calm if that happened. I was the only guy in the boat, so I wanted to make sure I didn't look like an idiot if I fell in. Fortunately, we rocked it. We blasted through the rapids and drops with only a minor stall in an eddy. If you are ever in the Charlotte area I highly recommend going to the USNWC and doing the whitewater rafting. It was awesome. Next year we are planning on hitting it two or three times throughout the day.

Next we made our way to the ziplines, but a two hour wait was not our idea of a fun time, so we decided to try out one of the ropes courses. This was a poor choice. My legs were toast, the wabble factor was cranked up to 11. Also I'm not a huge fan of heights. I do okay on things like that when I'm moving through them but I got stuck behind one kid that was having a bad time, so I was stranded 30 feet in the air on a swaying tree platform. Not cool. After that I had to rescue a little girl that couldn't reach one of the little switch points. This meant I had to take the black course aka the hardest one on my shaky legs. I was done with the ropes course pretty quick.

Following our misguided adventure on the ropes course, we made our way back to the whitewater channel and stage to grab some more food and beer. We hung out long enough to catch Red Bull's Alex Morgan do some slackline over the whitewater, which was pretty gnarly. He ended his...session...sesh...I don't know...back off Warchild...with a back flip into the water so that was cool.

We had a blast at @usnwctuckfest this weekend. Check out @alexomason slacklining over the river from Saturday night @redbull #tuckfest #usnwctuckfest

A video posted by Matt Haley (@mattmhaley) on Apr 25, 2016 at 4:18pm PDT

After the slackline performance we decided to stay for a song or two of the headliner, Langhorne Slim and the Law (the song in the instagram post above) then headed back to our hotel. It was a long day but definitely an awesome one. Staying the extra night was a great call. We zonked out at the hotel as soon as we got back, but we were able to relax in the morning and take our time heading back to Atlanta instead of getting back super late on Saturday night.

Two trips to Tuckfest are in the books and it's starting to become one of my favorite weekends of the spring/summer. The race is pretty tough, but it's good work on some challenging terrain, plus it brings in an element of unknown when it comes to the competition, which is nerve racking but good.  

Race Recap: Heritage Park 7.5 Mile Trail Race

Heritage Park marks the second race of the Dirty Spokes Trail series and it's typically a bit of a ball buster for me. At, roughly, 7.5 miles it always seems like it's just outside of my comfort zone this time of year. Going into the race, I'd been logging good mileage in the mid-40s to 50s as part of my typical steady build up and I even threw in a hill workout to try and start working on some strength.

I felt like I ran pretty well at Mayhem on the Mountain, but I figured Heritage park would be a better litmus test for where my fitness is right now. The course is a little more rolling and doesn't have the same short steep climbs as the last race. Things start out on a gravel road that loops around the park's large open arena, through the parking lot then past the barn and onto the trails. The majority of the course is run on well worn mountain bike trails with a couple of sections using wider, double-track equestrian trails. Like I said before, it's a rolling course with a good mix of flat, up, down, and turns before hitting decent climb in the final 3/4 of a mile back up to the arena where the race finishes.

My plan was to stay relaxed early and work my way into it letting the short course (2.8 miles) guys go out and just run my own race. I didn't really have much in the way of expectations. This is a weird race where sometimes you'll get a UGA guy that comes down from Athens, hell one year a guy from Australia that was teaching up there showed up and destroyed. Of all the Dirty Spokes races this one is the one that has the highest wildcard factor in terms of competition.

For once I actually got out the door on time. I was in the car and moving at 6:30 to make the hour drive out to Watkinsville and made it out their with plenty of time to get situated. I checked in and grabbed my number then continued my tour of the bathrooms of the lower 48 states - that's what my mom and dad used to say whenever my brother or I would have to go to the bathroom when we were driving cross country as kids.

It was a cold morning with the temperature hovering in the mid 20s. That wouldn't be bad for early February under normal circumstances, but earlier in the week it was in the mid 50s and low 60s, so the 30 or 40 degree temperature swing made the cold a little more biting. With the cold and the long drive, I wanted to make sure I got nice and warmed up, so I headed out for a 15-20 minute warm up on the opening section of the course. As I was heading back to the car I ran into Mitch Novy as he was getting ready to head to the start. In true Keene State, ragamuffin fashion I was grabbing gloves, arm warmers, and my jersey all while tying my shoes with about 10 minutes to spare before the gun.

When we made it to the start we both exchanged pleasantries with the usual suspects. It's really cool to see how competitive the series is through all the age groups for men and women. There are some serious battles that really heat up as it goes along. I love talking with those guys before and after the races. There are some guys and gals that are killing it in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and I hope that I am still out there getting after it like they are.

I told Mitch that I wasn't planning on going out hard and I was focusing on just settling in and trying to ease into things. Since his race was 2.8 miles, he was prepped and ready to go out hard, XC spikes and all. And go out hard he did. At the guy, my man was gone. He instantly had a 10 meter lead, with a young kid - maybe 12 or 14 - trailing behind him. I was a little behind the young gun while everyone else settled in behind me. As we worked our way around arena on the gravel road, I gradually started pulling the two leaders back in. I was a little conflicted because I glanced down at my watch and we ran about a 75 second first quarter, which was much, much quicker than I wanted to go out. However, I was sitting in no mans land and I've always enjoyed running on gravel roads, especially, flat, fast gravel roads.

Roughly a half mile into the race I realized that Mitch had settled in and I decided to try and pull him in and run with him until the split. I pulled up along side of him and we ran side-by-side before dropping onto the singletrack. I pushed ahead to take a slight lead figuring I would be better off keeping the the pace higher and trying to separate myself from the pack early. I was little surprised that Mitch let me open up a little bit of a gap but he kept it pretty close for the first two miles. I think we both realized that we had a nice early cushion and settled in shortly after the mile mark. Just before 2.5 miles we had to cross a small creek (or crick as they say down here). There was a photographer there and after the race I was all jacked to see the picture because a bunch of people put theirs on facebook. Mine did not come out so hot. I felt like I looked so smooth going over it, but that was not the case.

Seriously, what is that? I look like I'm afraid of a spider or something. Embarrassing. Ferenc is going to be pissed that I'm making the jersey look bad, but stay tuned it gets better. Anyway, after the crick we went through the split where I raced deeper into the woods while Mitch made the turn to head back to the finish. From there on out I was pretty much on my own. It's always hard to tell how far up or down you are on some of these trails that double back on themselves, so each time I caught a glance of someone else I tried to put my nose to the grindstone and get rolling.

Once I made it through four miles, I had a pretty good feeling that I was well in control. I have been trying to take some of the things that Coach Quinn talks about to the team into my running, with the main theme being that 'it's about us'. It doesn't matter what the other team does or what anyone else does as long as we/I do what I'm supposed to do. My goal in that is to stop worrying about what's going on behind me and just focus on the road/trail ahead of me. It's probably not a coincidence that I run my best when I'm focused on what I need to do versus what the people behind me or in front of me are doing.

I tried to stay focused on racing, but I ended up just kind of settling in and going into cruise control for the second half of the race. I felt like I was doing a good job of pushing the pace on some of the flat sections, but I was feathering the brakes a little on the downhills. We've had a good amount of rain down here over the last month or so and a lot of the downhills were pretty washed out which had me a little worried about rolling an ankle.

Heritage Park has a ravine/gully type feature to it with creek, sorry crick running along the bottom. The course runs down to the crick in the first half of the race, crosses it, then works its way along side before crossing again and then climbing back out of the gully. By the time I reached the base of the climb back out I knew I had the win sown up. To try and get myself going again I wanted to finish under 50 minutes, which meant I needed to make the final climb and finishing stretch in under five minutes. This stretch is a little more than a half mile, so I felt like it was doable, but I ended up cresting the climb and coming out of the woods right around 50 minutes and finished the 7.5 mile race in 50:21.

That Untapped hat looks good on the top step

I was happy to get the win. I don't think I've ever won at Heritage Park before. Like I said, it's a tough race for me fitness-wise and a lot of times you get one or two guys that are just straight up faster than me. I thought I'd be able to run a little bit quicker, as I've run in  the 48s on this course before, but I'll chalk that up to trying to shake people and/or chase people down the last couple of years. I entered the race hoping it would give me a better idea of my fitness early in the year, but came out of it just as unsure as I was before. I feel like I'm set up better than I was last year though.

I spent a ton of time during December and January trying to get my hamstring right. It's still tight every now and again, but I'm in a better spot than I was at this time last year. I'm still working on it, but my mileage is much better this year. I'm probably not quite were I was going into 2013 but I feel like I'm closer to that than where I was last year, which is a good thing. My first goal race is still more than a month away, so for now I just need to stay course and keep working.

Overall Heritage Park was a success. It was a solid run at a good tempo and most importantly it was on singletrack. I need all the practice I can get on singletrack and technical trails going into River Gorge. Next up is the Thrill in the Hills half marathon on February 20th. I'm not viewing that as a race, more of a long workout. Obviously, I want to perform well, but I know I'm not quite ready to race that distance. That being said, it will be a really good tune up a month out from River Gorge.

Here's what the race looked like on Strava

After the race I drove over to Watkinsville proper and stopped at Jittery Joe's for a nice hot cup of coffee to refuel for the ride home. I went with their Tour de Force dahhk roast and dropped a spoonful of Untapped maple in it and munched on a maple waffle. Jittery Joe's is a really cool coffee shop based in Athens, in fact I think there is only one outside of Athens (I could be wrong). I started drinking coffee during training camp this past year and we have a few of their varieties at the office so I've really come to enjoy it (always with a shot of maple syrup of course). They have also been long time supporters of the cycling community, which I think is pretty cool.

After my post-race snack I headed back home and met up with Amanda for some lunch before we headed downtown to check out Ponce City Market and walk around on the Beltline. There were a ton of people out walking around, which I was little surprised by since it was cold for Georgians. After we we worked up an appetite walking around we headed to Mellow Mushroom for pizza and beer which was long, long overdue.

Sunday morning I decided to go for a recovery ride on my sweet new Cannondale CAAD10 instead of running. I rode nearly 40 miles due to a slight miscalculation of distance from home. It was a really fun ride, probably a little hillier and further than I should have gone, but I really enjoyed rolling along on my new ride. Apparently buying a bike the day after a "snow storm" is the way to go since I got a good deal on her.

My sweet new wheels!

I rode over to the Buford Dam, which is a really cool spot to ride. There's an awesome stretch of rode that goes over the top of the dam, overlooking Lake Lanier to one side and the Chattahoochee River on the other. The dam is one of those earthen Army Corps of Engineer dams like Otter Brook or Surry in New Hampshire, so I enjoy the few minutes of nostalgia.

Race Recap + Another Microadventure

Race Recap:
Dirty Spokes Mayhem on the Mountain 5 Mile Trail Race

My first race of 2016 was also the first race of the Dirty Spokes Series. Mayhem on the Mountain was a brand new race on brand new trails at Sawnee Mountain, and now the series will start and end there. I got out on the new trails a week before the race to pre-run the course and I was really glad that I did. It's a straight forward course that follows the ridgeline trail around the mountain. It doesn't have a ton of overall vertical but there is plenty of up and down. I'd say it's the toughest Dirty Spokes or XTERRA course that they have had so far. Everything is steep. There's nothing overly long, but all the climbs are steep and they come at you one after the other.

The course was laid out on the entirely new trail system that's just been finished at Sawnee Mountain. The mountain has two peaks and is bisected by Bettis Tribble Gap road. The old trails at Sawnee, where the final race of the Dirty Spokes series is held, feature a four mile loop that goes up to the summit and has a cool lookout called the 'Indian Seats' where you can see the North Georgia Mountains and surrounding towns.

The new trails are on the other side of Bettis Tribble Gap and run around the mountain, climbing up to near the summit on the backside. Laid out in a counter clockwise direction, the course saw the majority of the climbing spread out over the first three-ish miles. Normally, that would be a good thing, but since it was all short steep climbs and then short drops, it really beat you up by the time you got to the top. Still, that's better than grinding out a two mile climb and then dealing with the short steep up and downs. I guess that's the only way the course would have been harder. Remind me NOT to suggest that.

I fell back into my normal ritual pretty easily pre-race. Pasta party Friday night then, of course, we were late getting out the door on race day. I had every intention of getting to the park at 7:30 to give myself an hour before the race started, but we didn't get there until 7:45 which meant we had to park at the main lot and take a shuttle. I take full responsibility for being late and I'm super thankful that Forsyth county runs shuttle vans so we still made it there in time to get my number and do a short warm up.

When we arrived, I made my way to check-in where Linda from Dirty Spokes decided to ratchet up the pressure nice and early by giving me bib number 1.

I caught up with Mitch Novy, one of my running buddies down here. We both ran for Saucony Hurricanes for a little while before he left to join Reckless Running and now he's running for Honeyy Stinger, which is pretty sweet. I mean they are no Untapped Waffles but Stinger Waffles are pretty good. Mitch and I caught up for a bit and did a short warm up jog on the last bit of the course. Neither of us were big fans of that, since the final mile or so of the course was downhill, which meant we were warming up by running up hill...no fun.

They ended up separating the two races (long course - 5.1 miles & short 3.1) by about 10 minutes to allow for spacing going into the trails. This was a really good idea because the parking lot/driveway area is pretty limited, so there wasn't a lot of space to spread things out before getting into the woods. Fortunately the trail was pretty wide, three to five feet probably. That's wider than a lot of the mountain bike trails in the area. You probably couldn't run side by side he whole way but at least there was enough room to pass.

At the start I got out to the front pretty quickly then settled down to see if anyone was going to hammer early on. I was looking forward to running with Mitch, but since he was in the short race I was on my own. The other couple of guys settled in behind me and we went into the woods single file in a lead group of three with everyone else strung out behind us. I tried to stay relaxed early on, knowing what was in store for me later, and settled into a nice rhythm for the first mile or so. I gave it a little bit of gas at the top of the first couple of short climbs and ended up opening up a little bit of a gap. I kept telling myself to stay relaxed and just get through the climbs. I tried to keep a similar effort and tempo so that while the climbs would slow me down, they wouldn't throw me totally off rhythm.

Side note: For the life of me I cannot spell the word rhythm.

Just before we got to the 1.5 mile split where the 5k took a cut through trail we dropped onto a double track section that looked like an old jeep road. After about 200 yards on the jeep road we hit the first of a couple of nasty switchbacks that felt like they were nearly vertical. Once I crested that and came down the other side I had a gradual climb up to the split. At that point I glanced back to see where the other guys were, and to my surprise they were out of sight. That was a pretty good feeling, knowing that I still had to run the toughest part of the course. I took a deep breath/sigh of relief as I felt like as long as I stayed on two feet and made it too the top in first that no one would be able to stay with me on the descent.

The next mile and a half was a real grind. A lot of short steep climbs then short steep descents, which absolutely hammer your legs. There was one particularly nasty set of switchbacks that I forgot about, which took me a minute or two to recover from before I settled back in. When I reached the top, I felt like I was crawling but I knew once I got over it I'd be able to get rolling. I tried to recover a little bit after we crossed over the lookout tower road then really got on the gas once I started going down. I was hammering at this point. The fresh trail was pretty well cut so the footing was really good despite all the rain we've been having lately. I had a couple of moments where I did't fully trust putting all my weight into the corners, but my LaSportia Mutants were super stable and did a nice job of gripping but staying responsive and quick.

When I came up on the short course again I went to work on catching as many of the short course runners as I could before the finish. I ran into a little trouble on a short false flat where I was expecting things to stay gradually downhill. I was a little worried that I over cooked it but the trail dropped back down shortly after and I was able to let gravity do most of the work. With about 300 meters to go I set my mind on catching one last 3 miler but he must have heard my foot steps thundering down the mountain behind him because he took off. We were both all out sprinting down this rocking trail toward the finish. He held me off and I congratulated him on a great finish after I crossed the line.

I ended up running 35:11 for 5.1 so I was a shade under seven-minute pace. On that course, I will certainly take it. Since it was the first race on those trails and technically the first time they were open to the public that's the course record. Next year I'll have to shoot for sub 35. I was really happy to get the win and run pretty well on a tough course. I wasn't quite sure what to except with it being the first race of the year, but it was a good solid way to start the year off.

After the race Amanda and I continued our search for good donuts with a trip to Dutch Monkey Donuts. I went with the maple vanilla swirl and it was excellent. We decided to take a day trip up to Chattanooga since we were already out that direction. We really just walked around downtown and did a little window shopping then headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Patriots game and eat wings. Two nice back to back weekends to start the offseason.

mmmmmm...donuts

I'm not 100 percent sure what I've got next on the docket. I'll definitely be running all the Dirty Spokes and XTERRA races this year, so Heritage Park will probably be the next race. Right now my first big goal race will be River Gorge and then probably Peach Jam after that. I am also kicking around the idea of doing a 55 mile 'gravel grinder' on the bike in February. We shall see.

Almost forgot...here's what the race looked like on Strava (go easy on me New Englanders. I didn't decide it was a mountain!)