Video Race Recap: Dirty Spokes Haw Creek 10k

Video recap of the Dirty Spokes Haw Creek 10k. I'll have a longer write up shortly, but I wanted to get something up after the race. As you can tell from the video, I got the win over Jesse Rappole, which was a nice confidence booster. I ran 35:15 on the trails, which is about 5:40 pace, so that was also exciting. I wanted to go out and push it in this race and try to get a gauge of where I am at right now. It was nice to be able to go for it and get the win. I was hanging on a little at the end, but it was nice to get into a rhythm and roll and feel somewhat comfortable running faster than I have been lately. I think the track workouts are paying off.

Rad Run: Big Daddy Loop on Lookout Mountain

Last weekend, Amanda and I took an impromptu trip up to Chattanooga, Tennessee. I got up early on Sunday morning and hit the trails on Lookout Mountain and brought my Go Pro along for the ride. I ran the Big Daddy Loop, which combines seven trails and travels from Tennessee, south into Georgia and then back north to Tennessee. The run follows lower trails before making the climb up to the bluff trail, which offers awesome views of the Tennessee River Valley.

I've attempted this run three times, finally doing it correctly on this third try. The first time I took a wrong turn and the second time I decided to stay on the lower trails a little longer because there was 4-6 inches of snow on the mountain and I was worried about the bluff trail being sketchy. This time I was a lot more confident in the route. The trail was a little over grown in some sections and there was poison oak everywhere, but once I got onto the bluff trail, I wasn't worried about it. The views were awesome and running along the edge of a cliff is a really cool experience.

Here's what it looked like on Strava (the time is off because I was messing around with the camera)

Rad Run: Sawnee Mountain

I ran up Sawnee Mountain on Saturday and decided to bring my GoPro. Sawnee is the highest mountain in metro Atlanta at just over 1,900 feet. It's higher than Stone Mountain (confederate mount Rushmore...seriously) and Kennesaw Mountain, but shorter than the mountains up in North Georgia. All in all it was a good run, I got some decent climbing in over 10 miles and got a chance to get a little more familiar with the course for the upcoming Dirty Spokes race.

Race Recap: Dirty Spokes Harbins Park Trail Half Marathon

Editor's note: This is another one that sad in my drafts folder for a few weeks before I finished it. This race was on May 9, a week before the 3 hour mountain bike race.

I've been MIA from blog the last couple of weeks due to work and not racing, but truthfully I haven't really done much lately that's been blog worthy. My workouts have been going pretty well, but other than that my runs have been pretty normal. With that said, I'm getting back on the horse after getting back into the swing of things with the Dirty Spokes Harbins Park Trail Half Marathon on Saturday, May 9.

This is the first real warm weather race down here and with it being a half marathon, Dirty Spokes smartly starts it a 7:30, unfortunately for me it came after the Draft and right in the middle of rookie minicamp. That meant the week leading up to race day was filled with poor nutrition, so-so hydration, and a lack of good sleep. Needless to say, I was a little worried about where I was at going into the race, but I'm chasing another series title so bailing was not an option.

Harbins is an underrated park in my opinion. It's got a 5 mile hiking trail that hosts an XTERRA race in the fall as well as around four miles of paved paths and three different mountain bike trail systems. The mountain bike trails are fairly new and two of the three systems are wide cut, which makes it a great spot for trail running. The park has a tricky amount of elevation change to it, nothing crazy but enough to do some damage at the end of a race if you aren't paying attention.

The half marathon course starts with a brief loop on the pavement before hitting the trails. The course follows the MB1 & MB2 trails (it's a great park but could use a little creativity on the trail names) for nearly five miles before connecting to the hiking trail for the next five miles, at that point you run along the equestrian trail (yeah they have that too, sorry totally forgot about that trail) before connecting to the MB3 trail and then eventually finishing with a grueling quarter mile on the paved path.

Harbins Park trail map - hard to decipher but this gives an idea of what the course was like 

I ran into Mitch, who was running the short course, when I got to the race and he asked if I was planing to go out with him. Since the short course was 3.5 miles, no chance. I said my plan was to hang back and try to conserve some energy for the last few miles, when it was going to start getting hot and when the rolling hills would start to take their toll. I didn't see any of the guys that I consider rivals but there were plenty of usual suspects. That last sentence kind of makes me sound like a dick, but none of the guys I've lost to in the last few months were around so I thought if I ran smart I should be able to get the win. Yeah that didn't really sound any better. I wanted to win the race, but wasn't sure what kind of legs I would have. That's a little less douchey right?

I didn't get much of a warm up in, so I was heavily committed to staying conservative early on. I kept thinking about the TuckFest half where we had a group for four pretty close together despite the fact that Ryan Woods would go on to win by a good margin and I would end up out in front of the rest of the field in second. I was trying to calm my mind and tell myself that it would okay to not be alone off the front right away.

When the gun went off, Mitch took off. He ended up so far out in front it was almost comical. It kind of worked out like a bike race where he went off the front while the rest of the field stayed behind me, which gave Mitch an instant 25-30 yard lead. He was first into the woods by a long way and I followed in second with a 10 yard gap on the guys behind me. Mitch was out of sight after about a mile and I was firmly settled into no man's land, which was fine by me.

I was feeling pretty good early on and just tried to stay calm and resist the urge to push the pace over the mostly downhill early miles. I was maintaining a decent lead over the two guys behind me but they looked like they were working pretty well together, so when we hit the hiking trail I decided to put in a surge until I reached the base of the first climb around the seven mile mark. I got into a good rhythm and was rolling pretty well on the hiking trail so that gave me a little boost going into the climb. I actually got to the first water station before they were ready for me but luckily they had water laid out in cups on the ground. I grabbed one a sipped trying to remember to stay calm with the climb looming ahead.

I worked my way up the switchbacks and when I crested the hill I tried to take a few deep breaths and recover before putting in another surge on the long downhill that followed. At this point the guys behind me were out of sight, so I tried to focus on settling into a good rhythm with the next three miles being really runnable. Things were going really smoothly until just after nine miles when I hit the equestrian trail. Everything just hit me all at once, heat, hydration, my hamstring tightened up, it was a murphy's law situation. The equestrian trail should have been another strong section for me, but instead I went into the final 5k of mountain bike trails reeling.

The last three miles aren't technical, but they are tight and twisting and tough to establish a rhythm on. I was pretty sure that I had built up a decent lead, but the way I ran the 10th mile had me starting to look over my shoulder expecting to see someone at any moment. I made one more push on a double track section of the trail that cut between two sections of singletrack, trying to kick start things with a surge. It worked for a few minutes but shortly after coming back onto the single track I started to fade again.  

Still struggling, I slogged my way to the final mile and then switched into survival mode. I knew I wasn't far from the finish and I kept telling myself  'just get to the pavement'. Once I did I was able to open up my stride a little bit and cruise into the finish for the win.

Officially, I finished in 1:26:55, ahead of the second place finisher, Kenyrik Alexis, who crossed in 1:30:47. I don't think I could have felt better for the first 7 or 8 miles and I don't think I could have felt worse for the last 3 or 4 miles. It was a tale of two races for me, but coming off of a busy stretch at work I just wanted to get the win.

Here's what the race looked like on Strava.

Video Race Recap: XTERRA Georgia Deep South 15k

Another awesome preroll shot of me. This time it looks like I am about to sneeze out my central nervous system.

Video Race Recap: Dirty Spokes 3 Hour Mountain Bike Race

Write up to follow. Shout out to YouTube for making me look like Jabba the Hut in the preroll screen.

Tuck Fest 1/2 Marathon - La Sportiva Mountain Cup

A few weeks ago I was checking out the La Sportiva Mountain Cup schedule to see if they had any races that I'd be able to go to. They are holding one in Georgia, and I stumbled upon one at something called Tuck Fest in Charlotte, NC. I did a little more digging and decided to make a weekend trip out of trying to nab a few points in that series. Tuck Fest, as it turns out, is a pretty rad festival held every year at the US National Whitewater Center featuring three days of outdoor events including trail running, mountain biking, whitewater rafting, kayaking, SUP, dog jumping, live music, and beer.

Tuck Fest has a cool model where you sign up (35 bucks) and you can compete in as many events as you want. You can also buy a sport pass from the USNWC to try the whitewater stuff, ropes courses, and zip lines. On top of that, admission to the festival was free. Despite the fact that this race came at the end of what would be five straight weeks of racing, I found a couple cheap hotels near by so Amanda and I decided to make the trip.

We hit the road around 4 on Friday afternoon and made pretty good time getting up to Charlotte, it's about a three hour drive from where we live north of Atlanta. We debating heading over to the USNWC for a few of the Friday festivities, but we had both had a long week and needed some rest so we grabbed dinner and headed straight to the hotel. Hotels are the big difference between when I handle the logistics of a trip and when Amanda handles them. Granted we were trying to do this on the cheap, but I booked a cheap hotel by the airport where she would have found something nicer. Not to be disparaging towards the particular hotel we picked, but I'm pretty sure it's been the setting for an episode of Criminal Minds or CSI or something.

Surprisingly we both got a pretty good nights sleep and headed over to the race about an hour before the start. I grabbed my number and wristband and got in a quick 1.5-2 mile warm up on the last section of the course. I didn't really know what to expect of this course or who would show up. I figured there'd be a few guys there since it was a Mountain Cup race. The series has been won by guys like Rob Krar and Jordan McDougal in the past. I also struggled to find much more than a basic map for what the course would be like. Those factors combined with a hectic week had me feeling rather apprehensive about how the day would go.

Here. We. Go.

As I made my pre-race prep I spotted Ryan Woods from La Sportiva. He won the series last year and finished second to Rob Krar a few years ago, he's pretty good. I figured he'd be there but I didn't recognize anyone else. I told myself not to worry about it and just run my race. Maybe I could pop a good one since I wasn't expecting much. I saw one dude that was decked out head to toe in Newton gear, but other than that things looked pretty standard on the starting line. Now about the course.

Tuck Fest 1/2 Marathon - 2 Loops

We started at the Adventure Pavilion with a parade lap around a small loop in the parking lot. After that the course dipped into the woods and onto the rolling single track. It snaked through the woods along side the man made whitewater river before looping around to run along the Catawa River. After about three miles of twisting trails things opened up a little bit with more double track, and some powerline trail before hitting more single track and then spilling out into the parking lot for the final few hundred meters. That's the quick and dirty run down of the course. It doesn't sound too bad on the surface. It didn't have a lot of climbing and it opened up in the second half, switching from tight, twisting trails to runnable double track. Pretty sweet right?

Oh wait, I forgot to mention that it rained every single day for the week leading up to the race. That made the course a little wet. And by wet, I mean sloppy and that's before everyone ran a lap on it. 

The start

I didn't get a great jump off the line. The ready, set, go start caught me a little off guard. As you can see from the photo above, Ryan Woods got out to the front right away while I was a few yards back in the middle of the scrum. I knew that he was the man to beat, so on the sharp down hill that followed the start I moved to the outside and fell into stride behind him. A couple other guys settled in behind me and we had a four man lead group featuring Woods, myself, a guy with headphones, and Johnny Newton. I swear I could write a dissertation on running a trail race in headphones but we'll get to why that's a bad idea later. On the starting line the Newton guy sounded like he was just out for a run. He had he Go Pro on and was talking about treating it as a long run. At first I thought, okay maybe I don't need to worry, but I got my doors blown off by a guy pushing a double stroller once (true story from when I lived in Philly. The dude was pretty legit though he ran like 16:30).

This is what a poor start looks like

As I was saying, our four man lead group materialized pretty early and that's how we entered the trails. Once we hit the single track my decision was easy. Hang on to Ryan Woods for as long as I could without going into the red. I figured that would at least get me clear of the guys behind me. I stayed 3-5 yards back of Ryan keeping my eyes glued to the trail in front of me and looking to see whether I should follow his lines or pick my own based on how much he was slipping and sliding.

Misty morning photo by Amanda Hein

Things weren't too bad early on. The trails were muddy and slick, but since we were the first ones to hit them we were able to find decent purchase. I stuck with Ryan for the first couple of miles but when we hit a section of trail that featured some climbing he started to open up a little bit of a gap. I took a few chances on the ensuing down hills and was able to mitigate the damage, but I decided that I should follow a similar plan to the way I ran River Gorge. Things are starting to round into shape for me, but I'm still not quite there, so I knew that I didn't want to use up too much in the early going and blow up later on. I backed off a little and made the decision to really work the flat sections and just try to say on my feet on the ups and downs. 

Headphones was hanging pretty tough for the first couple of miles but when we started to hit the ups he fell back and by four miles I was running in no mans land. The course spilled out onto powerlines a couple times and I could still see Ryan, so I tried to give it a little gas on a couple of the points, which kept me racing. That turned out to be important. Early on I didn't realize that it was a two loop race. That's my own fault for not paying close attention at the pre-race meeting. Once I heard follow the yellow signs, I was like 'I got this'. I realized it had to be two loops around five miles. I new I was getting close to the finish and when we crossed the top of a hill on the powerlines I knew we only had a mile+ to go because that's were I did my warmup.

Initially, that was a great realization. Coming into the race, I was worried about not knowing the course and now I got a good clean look at it on the first lap and could plan out exactly where I wanted to attack the course and were I could recover. If you've ever run on powerline trail you know they have a lot of up and down. It seems like you are always climbing or descending. This course featured a really tough powerline climb up to the parking lot about a half mile before the split/finish and it was super muddy. However, when I crested it I could see Ryan ahead of me and after a check of the watch, I figured he had about 45 seconds on me. That gave me a nice boost of confidence going into the second lap. I doubted that I'd be able to catch him unless he had a major issue in the second half but I felt good about where I was. I downed some Untapped before hitting the woods for the second loop and tried to go to work again.

As soon as I hit the single track the second time around I knew it was going to be a long lap. The trail was absolutely destroyed. It was a battle just to stay on the trail in some spots and finding solid ground was not happening. Early in the second lap I started passing people from the morning's other race, the quarter marathon, aka one loop of the course. This is where I started to have a few issues with the race organizers. They started the half marathon at 8 and the quarter at 8:30, I came through the start of the second lap around 45-50 minutes, which means the quarter marathoners where only on the course for 20 minutes before I started my second lap, so I started to catch them after about a mile. 

The course was a muddy disaster and there really was no way around that. Everyone had to deal with it and I made my peace with that fact on Friday afternoon. I wore my La Sportiva Mutants and even then I still struggled in sections after they became caked in mud. I was stomping my feet on the rock steps and wood bridges that were scattered through the woods. It was probably the muddiest, sloppiest races I've ever run, but that wasn't my issue. My issue was that I was hitting pockets of 10-15 people at a time on the muddy single track, which made it impossible to race. It turned into me trying to get by one group as quickly as I could so that I could recover enough to alert the next group that I was coming.

At one point, I started to get a side stitch from yelling "runner back" and "on your left". After a while it devolved into grunting sounds. This got really frustrating really fast. We've all run races where we have had to deal with lapped runners or something like a short course vs. long course situation, but I'd never seen anything like this. If this is what my guy Zak Noles was talking about dealing with out in California I don't know that'd ever run a race. It was brutal. I'm not trying to sound like a douche, I get that it might come off that way. I have respect for everyone that got out there and ran that course and I really hope everyone had fun and worked hard. I tried to cheer on people that I could, but it was incredibly frustrating to be trying to race and dealing with the mass of people in front of me. The trail would have been tough enough after it had been trampled, but deal with a slippy* (as they say in the UK) trail and trying to dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodge people the whole way was miz. 

The race organizers should have run both races starting at 8. The quarter marathoners could have run one lap, finishing up the final hill while the marathoners ran two, turing left into the trails before the final hill. That would have spread everyone out, especially on the back end, and it would have been less confusing at the finish because you would have had a greater number of quarter marathoners finishing before the bulk of the half marathoners came through. The idea behind Tuck Fest is for everyone to come out and have fun and try some different stuff and that's awesome, heck most of the events were untimed. I'm not trying to poo-poo the event, I actually really liked it, but if you are going to host a competitive event like a Mountain Cup race you have to keep that in mind. 

Fortunately, I was running in no man's land so it didn't really matter in the end, but there would have been no real way to make any kind of headway on the second lap. I guess that also worked in my favor since the guys behind me were dealing with it too. It is what it is, as they say. Now normally, this is also were I'd make my case against headphones in a trail race but that kind of goes without saying. There were a few people that could still hear me and a couple of people that I basically ran into because they were oblivious. That's spilt milk at this point, but don't you worry, my anti-headphone plea is still coming.

Sorry, I got a little off track there. Mercifully I made it out of the tight single track and onto the second half of the loop. That first three miles probably took me 25 minutes and I was completely covered in mud and totally shot from clawing past people, but I tried to keep focusing on catching and passing the next person ahead of me. I told myself that if the guys behind me didn't struggle as much as I did with the crowds (not really possible) that I could be in real trouble. 

I tried to battle the best I could, but I remember looking down at my watch with around two miles to go and being at 1:17 or something like that and thinking 'holy shit!' When I crossed the final powerline section for the final time, I was toast. I passed a few people on the way down and the climb back up was hilarious. People where slipping and sliding all of the place. One guy looked like he was on skis going backwards it was so slippery. I hopped into the knee high grass on the side of the trail just to try and find any kind of solidish ground.

When I crested the hill it felt like my shoes were full of cement and the ground was so muddy it actually looked and felt like I was running in peanut butter. I took a few deep breaths and literally kept plodding to the finish. When I finally hit the finishing stretch which was a short steep climb up a gravel road I opened it up a little bit to catch one more guy before the finish and crossed the line completely gassed. 

I was covered in mud all the way up both legs and my shoes were caked, but I finished second and that was pretty sweet. Except when the guy at the finish said "nice work man, you're third." I responded, "Uh...what...no...not possible". I looked up and the headphones guy was standing there. I was so confused. I said "but I never got passed". I was a little worried that in the scrum of people I took a wrong turn somewhere and ran extra, but at the same time I was pretty certain that I followed the course correctly. I was also only about 1:45 or 2 minutes behind Ryan Woods who was the winner, so me taking a wrong turn didn't really make sense unless he did too. Luckily he came over and vouched for me saying that I should have been second and that he had actually passed the other guy later in the race.

Once I heard that I knew that the other guy must have cut the course. There's no way that he could have gotten in front of both of us without cutting off good chuck of the course. I was able to work it out with the guy and we swapped the second and third awards. The first guy from the race seemed to think that was all that was needed as he said "We don't record the times, so as long as you guys are cool that's cool. I love runners."

Normally that would have been fine. I knew the time and I knew that my time was right, so I didn't really care, but I had to circle back with another guy at the finish to make sure we sorted the finish order out. I felt a little silly and didn't like complaining about the finish but since it was a Mountain Cup race an there were points on the line, I wanted to make sure that things got straightened out. I guess I won't really know until La Sportiva posts the points but hopefully it will all workout.

Wild Endurance powered by Untapped

I talked to Ryan Woods a little bit after the race about how insanely muddy the course was and how the finish worked out. Amanda and I walked around a little bit after trying to get a lay of the land for the rest of the day and to see if they had showers. She was glad the race was over as the way the finish was set up was giving her an anxiety attack, especially when she saw the headphones guy finish second. She said "Not to be a jerk or sound mean or anything, but I knew there was no way that someone wearing headphones would finish that high." Barring another double stroller guy situation I agreed.

Normally, I'm not anti-headphones, I just think you need to be responsible if you are going to wear them. I feel like I have some run in with somebody that can't hear whats going on around them in at least half of the races I run. If wearing them gets you out the door then, go for it, but trail racing is different than road racing. Sometimes you can zone out but there are usually a few instances were you can take a wrong turn if you aren't paying attention. I think that's what happened to the guy that ended up finishing third. It's likely that he would have still finished third, but I have no doubt that he  got caught up in his music and took a wrong turn, cutting off a least a mile of the course and probably more.

Tuck Fest also hosted a couple 5ks, a kids 2k race and a family adventure race, so there were three or four different color arrows. There was one spot in particular that had yellow (the half & quarter) going straight while blue and red arrows turned left. If I had to wager I'd say that's where he went rogue. As I type this I realize it's not really that big of a deal as long as things got sorted in the end, but I felt a little bad for the guy. I think he initially thought we were saying he took a shortcut on purpose and I don't think that's the case. I think it was an honest mistake, but I also think it could have been avoided. I blame the headphones!

Here's what the race looked like on Strava:


After all the craziness got sorted out I ran a a short cool down, about a mile and made my way to the showers. It took a good 10 minutes to scrub all of the mud off of my legs and I was wearing calf sleeves so from my ankles to the back of my knees were actually pretty clean. The rest of me though, was covered in mud.

They should have changed the name to Muck Fest

Normally, I pride myself on having an efficient stride. I remember States my junior year of high school at Franklin Park was a mud fest and I had the cleanest uniform of anyone on my team. All of that went out the window at Tuck Fest. Everyone was completely covered and you could tell that a lot of people went down. There were also plenty of people that didn't prepare for how muddy they were going to get because I saw a bunch of people caked in mud and wearing the race day shirt because it was the only clean thing they had.

I showered and changed and then Amanda and I spent the rest of the day taking in the festival. The USNWC campus is awesome and the festival was great. We did a loop after the race and saw people kayaking and SUPing on the man made whitewater rivers, we saw some jumping dogs, zip liners and checked out the ropes courses as well as the rock climbing and bouldering walls. It was kind of like a mini mountain games. I was fading fast an hour or so after the race so we grabbed some food and a beer and listened to a couple of the bands which was really cool.

We spent most of the day walking around to the different events and sampling some of the different beers that were sponsoring the festival. We watched a ton of the dog jumping and even saw the number 1 ranked dog in the country. It jumped 28 feet! We also caught a mountain bike trails show which was pretty cool and spent some time just hanging out watching people on the whitewater. We made the decision to make this a two day trip next year and try out the ropes courses and whitewater rafting.

 We decided to hit the road around five with since we were looking at a three hour drive home. We ended up stopping in Greenville, SC where we just missed the finish of the USA Cycling Crit national championships. Greenville is about half way between where we live and Charlotte so we stopped at Mellow Mushroom for pizza. It's a pretty cool little city and we are going to have to check it out further another time. We walked around a little before grabbing dinner and saw a bunch of the pro cycling team cars, no Phil Gaimon sightings, but maybe next week at Athens Twilight.

Overall it was a solid race and a great weekend trip. It really felt like we got a full weekend of stuff in on Saturday but we still had Sunday to relax a little and take care of some stuff around the house. I read an article on Outside.com about MicroAdventures (there's a book by the same name that I need to get) and while it's something we've been doing, little weekend or day trips, but the article really hit home and I want to make sure we keep doing them. I guess that's the 7R gene in me #wildendurance.

The race was solid. I accomplished what I went there for, to grab some mountain cup points and to finish on the podium. I've now got podium finishes in three states this year. I'll have to try and make it to SC and Alabama at some point and see if I can keep that tally growing. I'm throwing the time out the window because of the mud, but it was a good day of work. It also felt good to finish up a block of five straight weeks of racing. My legs are definitely feeling that stretch of racing, but I think it helped get me into better shape as I was also able to string together four straight weeks of 50+ miles.

My goals for the next couple of weeks are to keep steadily increasing my mileage but also to keep things relaxed for a few days and recover a little bit. I will probably try to work in a day off as well. The next race on my calendar is the Dirty Spokes Harbins Park trail half marathon, which will be my third half marathon of the year. I'm not expecting much with the Draft and rookie mini camp coming up at work, but it will be good to see where I'm at in a couple weeks.