It's a little hard to see on the picture but the course is laid out on the the Avalanche trail south of the river. Typically the race follows a concrete path then joins with the trail on the blue section above. You run the blue then the red sections before finishing with the green loop. That's where all the switchbacks and punchy climbs are.
Due to some heavy rain the night before the race, Tim had to re-route the course to start on the green section then continue onto the blue then red, then back up the other side (red, blue, green). It resulted in a slight shortening of the course - dropping it from 6.5 miles to 6 miles, but it put us on the trail a little quicker. That also meant we had to run straight up a short steep hill to get on the trail, which had a lot of people freaked out, but it really wasn't that bad.
I got out well and had about a 10 or 15 meter lead when we hit the trail. My plan was to get things rolling on the blue section of the Avalanche trail and try to stay on it until I got to the switchbacks. That worked out pretty well for the most part. I felt good early on so I really tried to work the flats and downhills and then just get up the climbs. There really aren't many of note in the early going, so I felt like I had settled into a pretty good rhythm once I hit two miles.
Once I hit the back side of the red trail (explorer trail) I realized that I had to back off a little bit. There were a bunch of corners that were wet, no puddles, but definitely slick. I ran in Scott Trail Rockets, which were fine on most of the course, but I didn't trust them in those wet corners. I tested the footing a couple times, but whenever I tried to drive out of the corners I'd slip.
Slight slipping aside, I didn't really have too many issues in this race. I struggled a little bit once I got to the switchbacks, but I was able to build up a good size lead in the early going and ended up running most of the rest of the race fairly relaxed. As much as I wanted to go completely into cruise control in the last two miles, Tim has put in an age graded category into five of the seven races this year. That gave me a little shot in the arm late in the race.
The first age graded race was UNG, I finished second there. I'd like to get the overall win and the age graded win for the series, so that little extra bit of motivation was helpful in the last couple of miles. I ended up crossing the line in 37:32 to take the win, Jeremy Shirey finished second (39:40) and Wayne Goff (39:44) took third. I was a little surprised that I won by as much as I did. Jeremy has been coming on really strong lately, especially at UNG. He was pretty much right on my heels during that race, so whenever he shows up, I know I have to be on it.
I ended up finishing second in the age graded results again, but since you have to run all five of the races I still have the overall lead.
Here's what the race looked like on Strava:
I'll keep this one short and sweet, but a quick little post-race recap. Amanda and I hit the Woodstock outlets for a bit. I scored a nice pair of New Balance shorts for 20 bucks, which is nice since most shorts I come across are 50 bucks now. After that we walked around downtown Woodstock for bit then made our way to Reformation Brewery. I won a six pack of their Belgian white ale at the race, so we decided to check it out. It was a cool spot. They had a five or six different beers. We each tried a few different ones, I enjoyed the Belgian white and the Prickly Pear wheat ale.
The brewery does this awesome thing where if you purchase a tour and don't use all of your pours - which I almost never do because I'm usually driving - you can trade those pours in for different stuff. I traded the three pours I didn't use in for a 22 oz. bottle of Cadence, their Belgian ale. I figured since the Tour of Flanders was the following day it was fitting. It's a great steak and potatoes beer. Amanda used hers for a half growler of the Pickly Pear.
Recovery Beer of the Week: Reformation - Union
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