Race Recap // Dirty Spokes Charleston Park 10k Trail Race

Charleston Park was the third race on the Dirty Spokes calendar this year. It's held on a fairly new mountain bike trail system on Lake Lanier. It features a little bit of everything. It's got a couple of grinder hills, some short punchy whoops, some technical/rooty sections, and a few longer sections that you can stretch your legs and get rolling.

I didn't really know what to expect going into this one having not raced since the beginning of February. I figured my best bet would be to approach it the same way I raced at Heritage Park last month. Ease into things and try to focus on racing the sections that fit my style. It worked well the last time out, so why not.

// The Course //
The 10k course utilizes the entire trail system on the map above. It starts out on the left side of the orange trail until it meets with the purple trail. The course runs counter-clockwise on the purple trail as it winds through the woods before meeting back up with the orange trail for the final mile or so. You finish by following the access trail back to the main parking lot.

This is a difficult race to figure out. It gets right into the trails with little room to stretch things out, similar to Mayhem on the Mountain. It's very punchy early on. The first mile is full of short steep ramps and quick downhills then ends with a long grinding climb. After you pass through the first mile you drop back down towards the water. The section that follows is more level but features a root covered low-lying trail that forces you to be nimble and quick-footed.

Photo courtesy of Dirty Spokes

Once you get through two miles things mellow out a bit though. The middle miles are firmly in my wheelhouse. They feature rolling terrain and longer, more straightforward sections that really allow you to get into a rhythm. Before the course reconnects with the orange trail you have one last climb to contend with. It's a long but gradual climb that works its way up from the shore to one of the higher points on the course.

After topping out on this climb you drop down to the orange trail where you finish things out with more short and steep up and downs. After you make your way through the ups, downs, twists, and turns you cross a concrete bridge and climb one final short hill before racing the final 400 or so meters to the finish.

// The Race //
Given that this race gets onto the trails so quickly with little room to spread things out, the shorter four-mile race started 10 minutes before the 10k. While this lead to some congestion in a couple spots later in the race, it made the start much easier to navigate. First, I knew everyone on the line was in the 10k. A lot of times it can be difficult to figure out who to follow and who to let go when both the short and long races start at the same time. Although now that I'm getting older and more mono-paced I should probably just be patient all the time.

I took the lead pretty much right away and was only followed by Jay Kolodzinski. He is a strong runner and I knew that if I let off the gas he wouldn't be far behind, so I needed to stay focused throughout the race. I wasn't quite prepared for how hilly the early part of the race was. I tried to settle into a rhythm once we got into the woods, but the early hills really took a toll. I tried to focus on trying to stay relaxed and find a comfortable effort level. The first two miles were pretty uneven and uneasy for me. I knew I needed to relax and stay patient until we going into the middle miles where I could start to pull away.

Fortunately, the root covered, twisty section around 1.5 miles allowed me to gain a little ground. It seemed like everyone let off the gas a little bit and, even though I'm not a great technical runner, I felt like I moved through that part of the course pretty smoothly. As I approached the two-mile mark, I finally felt like I was starting to settle into the race. I made one bonehead move at one of the course splits and nearly went the wrong way - fortunately, the volunteers set me straight. Once I got back on the right trail I started to really get into a groove.

Like I said, this section of the race really suited my running style. I was able to press the pace but remain comfortable for next 2.5 miles and that's where I really stretched out my lead. I knew that the last mile was going to be difficult, but I completely forgot about the final climb before you cross back over onto the orange trail. It's one of those climbs that levels out and then kicks back up a couple times before to reach the top. Two or three times you think you've topped out only to realize, nope it keeps going.

Grinding up it was definitely a challenge, especially since it threw me out of the groove I had been enjoying so much. Note to self: No Roots by Alice Merton is a good song to have stuck in your head while racing. I wasn't super happy with my effort level in the final mile. I relaxed a little too much. It was a case of building the last mile up to be more than it was in my head. I had these visions of struggling through it and my legs screaming, so I backed off going into it. At one point, I actually said out loud "What are you doing? You aren't as tired as you are thinking you are?" and at that moment, I saw the concrete bridge that signaled about a quarter mile to go.

After crossing the bridge and quickly tackling the short steep hill after it, I tried to open my stride up a little bit and finish the race out strong. I ended up stopping the clock at 38:14 to get the win, which is the second-fastest time I've run on this course. It turned out that I was only 15 seconds off my PR - and official/unofficial depending on your opinion on Strava course record. I don't remember what I had done going into this race that time, but I was pretty happy to take the win and run a solid time. Especially considering I wasn't really expecting much going in.

After hanging out at the finish for a bit, I cooled down and chatted with a few of the Dirty Spokes regulars. Mitch Novy won the short race in a PR and Jay ended up finishing second in the 10k. I was pumped for both of those guys to have good days. I ended up winning some awesome stuff, a six-pack of beer from Reformation in Woodstock, a box of blueberry nut butter Clif Bars - which are the best Clif Bars - and Tifosi sunglasses.

I also managed to pull off the age-graded win. I'm normally in that perfect spot where I'm not quite fast enough old enough to win the age-graded category but this time it ended up working out. For that, I got a really cool, handmade wooden medal specific to this race. Don Burkett handcrafts these for each of the eight Dirty Spokes series races. It's definitely one of the coolest medals I've ever won.

Here's what the race looked like on Strava:



// Recovery Beer of the Week //

Reformation Brewing - Sabine The Seeker
I know it kind of sounds like a character from Guardians of the Galaxy but since I won a six pack of it at the race it seemed like a fitting choice. I am always a big fan of breweries that sponsor races, especially those that give away beer. Reformation lists Sabine as a dry hopped French saison with notes of cantaloupe, orange blossom, and mild white pepper. It's definitely a solid spring beer. It's not too bitter and not too sweet, but most importantly does it pass the 'can I drink it and shovel this pizza in my mouth after the race?' test. Yes, yes it most certainly does.

// Closing Thoughts //
Considering the fact that I really didn't know what to expect going into this one, I was more than happy with the result. Early on, I wasn't feeling super confident and it seemed like I might have overcooked it on the early hills but I think I did a good job of staying calm and letting the race come to me after that. I really attacked the middle miles well and my overall pace was solid. I'm still not exactly sure where I stand when it comes to race fitness but I always seem to figure that out by racing a bunch in the spring.

In my efforts to continue to build my fitness, I did end up overcooking it the following day on my Sunday long run. I opted for 15-16 (it turned out to be 16) but that was a big mistake. I would have been good with 12 or 13 but 16 was too much. I was fried for the next couple of days. It pretty ended up taking me almost a week to get back to normal and I had to take a day off. I think I underestimated how much the race took out of me. Lesson learned there.

Next up is Rock/Creek River Gorge. I wasn't going to sign up for this race since it's all but certain I'm going to get throttled. Amanda and I have enjoyed using it as an excuse to take a long weekend trip up to Chattanooga though so I booked the hotel and signed up for the race. We'll see how it goes but I'm going into it with less than zero expectations this year.

Trestle Run // Unplugged

Realizing that you need to unplug every so often is not exactly a ground-breaking notion. Actually doing it though, that's a different story. Except for my runs, I am almost always on my computer or have my phone within reach. Most of the time it's necessary, but like everyone, I'm guilty of being glued to it for long stretches. It's something that I've been working on, leave my phone across the room at dinner, don't check work emails over the weekend, stop scrolling all the horrible takes on Facebook. You know stuff like that.

Amanda and I recently took a week off from work to go home and spend some time with family and while I didn't intentionally plan to unplug it turned out that was just what I needed. Now, I didn't lock my phones and computer away for the week but I did find that I spent a lot more time engaging with people and experiencing things then I did scrolling Twitter or Instagram.

I still spent some time on social media but I didn't find myself reaching for my phone every few minutes like I normally do. Maybe that's because we were in a different surrounding, or maybe it's because we were spending time with family we don't often see. Heck, maybe it's because I spent chunks of time driving the car to New Hampshire, Maine or Massachusetts. I'm not sure of the reason, but by week's end, I really believe it helped me feel refreshed.

A few things that made this possible, I left my computer (read: work computer) in my backpack. Save for one or two things - i.e. ordering lift tickets - I didn't turn my computer on after the first three days. I had planned on doing some blogging but since it didn't feel like we put ourselves in many time-wasting situations, I was okay with not writing.

Number 2, Do Not Disturb. Perhaps the greatest invention of our time. I put my work phone in Do Not Disturb for days at a time. I have an unhealthy habit of checking my phone all the time, to the point I feel phantom rings. It was massively reliving to forget about it for a few days.

Third, reduce the aimless scrolling. Often times I'll finish a run and grab my phone to upload the run to Strava while sitting on the steps. It's not uncommon for me to sit on the steps for 10 minutes scrolling Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. While on vacation I tried to limit that. I still checked in on Instagram every now and then but I kept those sessions short.

The one overriding thing that really helped me with this though, was trying to be more present and actually spend time with people. Whether that was my Dad, my brother or Amanda. Focusing on being engaged with the people I was around made unplugging easier and unplugging left me feeling refreshed when we got back to Georgia.

Here were some of my favorite things from our trip home...
Skiing at Loon 
I finally got my day on the slopes. Danny, Amanda, and I drove up 93 to Lincoln, NH to spend a day at Loon and it was awesome. Despite gray skies in the morning, it was bluebird day by lunch. Amanda and I ended up renting skis, which while slightly expensive was definitely worth it. I love my old K2's but having freshly tuned equipment for a change was nice.

We hit the road promptly at 6 am and were on the first chair at 9. Danny and I ended up squeezing one last run in just before they shut the lifts off, so my goal of first chair, last chair was a success. I stuck my GoPro session on my helmet and then spent the flight back to Georgia playing with the Quik app to make this fun video of the day.




Running with Friends
I don't get a lot of chances to run with people while doing regular training so I was excited to get a chance to catch up with my former roommate Joe Reynolds for an awesome 11 miles in Portland, Maine during the trip. We ran at Bradbury Mountain State Park over the summer but with the snow on the ground in Vacationland, we opted for a road route from Rising Tide Brewing in Portland's Back Cove out to Portland Head Light on Cape Elizabeth.

The lighthouse is pretty awesome. It's a very postcard-friendly spot. The best part about this run thought was having Reynolds tell me random historical facts about Portland the whole way. Did you know that it was commissioned by George Washington himself in 1787? True story.

The Olympics are over...sad face emoji
I am apologetically an Olympics guy. I'm a big fan of both the summer and winter games, but I think I enjoy the winter Olympics more. That sounds like it's probably recency bias, but I like getting a chance to see some of these different events that you really only get a chance to see once every four years and it seems like the winter games have more of that. I could do without a figure skating event every night though.

While the time difference made viewing this year's games a little tricky, I still found myself watching a lot of the prime time coverage and I really enjoyed being able to use the NBC Sports app to watch event replays on things I missed. I know that overall viewership was down and there are a ton of factors that go into that, but I think having access to live streams and full replays have really improved the overall experience of viewing the games at home. It's nice to not be beholden to what the prime-time broadcast has deemed as interesting.

Favorite Moment
Jessie Diggins & Kikkan Randall win gold - This was an incredible moment. Not only was it the first medal (and first gold) for US women in Nordic skiing, but it came at a moment when everyone had kind of written off the US team. There was a lot of talk about how the US was underperforming. Some of that was probably warranted, but in my opinion, much of that was due to NBC's expectation building and the fact that we were relying on a lot of older athletes like Shaun White Lindsey Vonn and a lot of very young athletes like the Shib Sibs and Chloe Kim.

When American's are billed as gold or bust and they don't win gold we have a tendency to look at it as a letdown. It's kind of how we are wired, but it stinks for some of these athletes that only have a chance to make a mark on the general public once every four years. I was so happy for Diggins and Randall to win gold and put a real stamp on what had been a strong performance for them. I'm enjoying their tour of all the morning shows and hope they're success cross-country skiing a little boost.

I think I've seen the video clip of the end of that race seven or eight times and it's given me goosebumps every time. Chad Salmela's call was incredible. He really captured the emotion and excitement of that moment. Even if you weren't aware of the history being made, it was impossible to not feel the emotion and weight of the moment while he's screaming "Here comes Diggins!"

Awesome.

Worst Moment
Olympic Athletes from Russia - Why did they even bother with this? Russia was banned except for 160+ athletes - and still had one of those athletes test positive - they only real punishment was that they didn't get to display the Russian flag. For some reason, they were allowed to compete in team competitions. That I really didn't understand. I can make peace with allowing athletes with clean bio passports to compete.

I can accept that, begrudgingly, but how can a group of those athletes compete in team events? At that point, they are no longer Olympic Athletes from Russia. They are a Russian team. If that's going to be allowed, then just call them Russia. Which is exactly what happened. NBC billed the USA vs. OAR hockey game as the USA vs. Russia with clips of 1960, 1980, and 2014 games playing during the run up to the broadcast. That defeats the purpose of the ban, doesn't it? This isn't a USSR/Russia thing. Those are essentially the same countries. They were OAR because Russia wasn't being recognized, except they were.

On a less frustrating note, the alpine skiing team event was awesome and I hope we put our best skiers into it next time.

What I've Been Into Lately
Norway is dominating these Winter Olympics with a unique approach to sports // USA TODAY
This article from USA Today was pretty intriguing. It came out in the middle of the Olympics as Norway was on its way to winning both the overall and gold medal counts in Pyeongchang. It's an interesting story about Norway's approach to youth sports and developing young athletes.

Unlike the U.S., where we keep score of everything all the time, Norway puts kids in sports but doesn’t let them keep score until age 13. The idea is to make sports part of their social development so that the motivation to stay involved is to have fun with their friends, not winning. Eventually, of course, the Norwegians introduce competition and the most advanced sports science techniques they can develop to pump out their medal-hoarding biathletes, skiers and ski jumpers. But the idea, Ovrebo said, isn’t to have the highest-ranked 10-year-old athletes in the world but rather the most mature adults.

Weekend Getaway // Territory Run Co.
I talked about Territory and their Runners of the Wild club/team a little bit in one of my last blogs. This is one of the reasons why I was drawn to join ROTW. They do an excellent job of telling stories that align with their products and share their mission. This short story serves as an ad for a new hoodie they've released but instead of just sending an email with a few photos of the shirt, they tell a story around some local runners and their weekly weekend run. It highlights the inclusiveness of this community and encourages others to develop something similar. I've talked a little about my enjoyment of this style of marketing in the past, but I really do like when companies create something that stands on its own, with or without a call to action to buy something at the end. I am much more likely to spend my money with a company that story tells around its gear like this.

Photo courtesy of Territory Run Co.

We Love Winter: Backcountry Skiing & Ice Climbing // NHPR // The Exchange
I caught some of this New Hampshire Public Radio show on our way home from skiing at Loon but ended up downloading the podcast to listen to it in its entirety a few days later. Hosted by Laura Knoy, this hour-long discussion show featured Andrew Drummond of Ski the Whites (and my last blog) and Tyler Ray, president of the Granite Backcountry Alliance, talking about the growth of backcountry skiing in the White Mountains. It was really interesting stuff. I especially enjoyed Tyler's revelation that skiing in New Hampshire got started when the CCC went town to town building ski trails and that one of GBA's goals is to try and resurrect some of those trails to turn them into glade skiing. I'm a big CCC nerd, so I thought that was pretty neat.

Photo courtesy of NHPR

Under An Arctic Sky // Netflix
This is an epic 40-minute film about cold weather surfing north of the Arctic Circle in Iceland. I'm not a surfer - there is no way that I'm cool enough to be a surfer - but I've seen this while scrolling through Netflix a few times and have been wanting to watch it. As luck would have it. I had a 90 minute flight from Indianapolis to Atlanta the other night and Delta had it in their in-flight lineup so I decided to finally watch it. It's quick but impressive. The scenery, shooting, and surfing were awe-inspiring throughout the movie. It made me want to try this out until I saw how quickly everything froze when they got out of the water. Nevermind. I'll pass.

Under An Arctic Sky - Official Trailer #1 from Chris Burkard on Vimeo.

What's Poppin' On IG

You have all been incredibly patient. The time has come. In 5 days - Monday, March 5th - my documentary, WHERE DREAMS GO TO DIE, following @garyrobbins the last 2 years at The Barkley Marathons, will be released for advanced download (just through March). Mark your calendars, set those alarms, and get ready to find out where dreams go to die. #WDGTD #NoBugles2018

A post shared by Ethan Newberry (@ethannewberry) on Feb 28, 2018 at 10:33pm PST

The Ginger Runner is releasing his Gary Robbins Barkley movie for download in five days. I'm really looking forward to checking it out.

There are only 22 days until #spring! This photo was taken during the snow storm on Sunday in #CumberlandMaine. #MaineWinter #SignsOfSpring #Bluebird #WinterStorm DM us your #MaineLife photos. 📷@alexandra16_16

A post shared by Down East magazine (@downeastmagazine) on Feb 26, 2018 at 7:42pm PST

We always had colorful birds in our front yard growing up. Mostly cardinals and blue jays, but whenever I see a colorful bird it reminds me of my mom and being at home.

I haven’t peed my pants with this much excitement since the 4th hottest member of New Kids on the Block almost looked directly at me during their concert! Fantastic race!! Gigantic congrats to @jessiediggins & @kikkanimal 🏅🎉🏅🎉🏅🎉🏅🎉 #gold #nordicstars #xcskiingrocks #btw #theconcertwastwoyearsago

A post shared by Rory B. (@rorybosio) on Feb 21, 2018 at 1:48pm PST

It was great to see the outpouring of support these two got on social media