(no subject)

[which_chick]

Saturday was the half-marathon Tiadaghton Trail Challenge, what I had signed up for and drug La and Trys into also signing up for. Evan (the ten year old) signed himself up and allowed as how he would beat us all. (Ten year old boys really like to trash talk.) It was north of State College, on I-80. As we drove there, it became winter. There was ice glazing all the tree limbs and about an inch of sleet on the ground at the race course. The day y-dawned bright and clear, with brilliant sunshine and a gorgeous blue sky. It was also about 35 degrees with a fairly brisk wind going on.



The race starts in a parking lot. It's unpaved. There are no amenities besides four portapotties with lines for each one. I believe there might also have been donuts but I didn't have any. If they'd been warm, I would have held my hands over them for warmth, though. I was very glad that I'd brought my ugly hat and my glubs.

About 270 people signed up for the thing, at least that's how high the bib numbers of finishers went. 238 people (according to emailed results) finished, so there was some attrition going on. At the start, which was 10:00 AM in the aforementioned bloody cold parking lot, everybody just kind of lined up and some official people in the front said stupid stuff like "Try not to fall on the ice-covered rocks" (this seemed to me to be a no-brainer) and we sort of waited until they said "GO!" whereupon we went. La and Trys and Evan and I were in the back so that we would not get run over by the faster people. We did not want to cause trouble or clog the way for faster runners. In hindsight, this was stupid on our part because we were behind too many slow people and the trail was a lot of damn singletrack at the outset.

Here follows the course description with my notes. Official course description is in italic capitals.

MILES 0 - 3.5 - START AT THE DCNR PARKING AREA, OUT TO MILE RUN ROAD, NORTH ON MILE RUN ROAD FOR APPROX. .25 MILE. As advertised. Broad road, easy going.

TURN ONTO THE MILE RUN TRAIL AT THE TRAILHEAD. Immediately bottleneck at creek crossing with ice-covered rocks and creek way too large to jump. Dither for what seemed like twenty minutes as very timid people in front of us attempt to cross. Each one remarks on the ice-covered rocks. *sigh*

STAY ON MILE RUN TRAIL FOR APPROX. 3.25 MILE. THIS IS A VERY TECHNICAL SECTION OF THE COURSE WITH ABUNDANT ROCKY AREAS. There is no dirt. Forget about dirt. Spend this time gingerly leaping from sleet-covered rock to sleet-covered rock on the singletrack. Also, bushwhack to pass the slowly plodding people in front of you because you stupidly started at the complete back of the pack. Note to self: Start in front of the people with a stick in each hand next time. Those are the walkers. You are faster than they are.

THIS SECTION IS MOSTLY INCLINE. THIS SECTION ENDS WITH AN AREA OF RESCUE / AID STATION ON MILE RUN ROAD. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS AID STATION. The "incline" isn't really that bad and there are switchbacks and stuff. The climb is pretty easy, footing notwithstanding. Aid station water is "room temperature" which is to say "too damn cold to drink".

MILES 3.5 - 6 - NOW THAT YOU HAVE REFUELED, CROSS MILE RUN ROAD AND RUN THROUGH A NICE SECTION OF PINES FOR ABOUT .25 MILE. THEN BACK UPHILL FOR ANOTHER .25 MILE. NOW SOME RECOVERY. ABOUT 2 MILES OF RECOVERY RUNNING NOW LIES AHEAD OF YOU. YOU ARE GOING TO NEED IT. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS SECTION WITH EASIER FOOTING AND GREAT VIEWS. There may have been great views. I was too busy looking at the singletrack trail in front of me and attending to its sleet-covered rocks to notice the scenery. The ice-covered tree branches were starting to melt at this point and they dropped jingling/clinking ice hunks around us as we shlepped onward. This section did not strike me as "recovery" so much as "short shlep downhill to creek, cross creek, shlep uphill for a while, then go downhill again and cross the same damn creek, go up a bit, cross the creek, go down a bit..." Some of the creek crossings struck me as contrived, but at this point I didn't know shit about gratuitously wet feet. (More about that later.) My feet were still dry at this point and I was only mildly pissed about the endless creek crossings.

MILES 6 - 8 - THE TRAIL COMES OUT TO FOURTH GAP ROAD. THERE WILL BE AN AID STATION HERE, TIME TO REFUEL. The water is still too damn cold to drink. I left Evan here for La and Trys because he could not keep up with me.

HEAD DOWN THIRD GAP ROAD TRAIL. BEAUTIFUL VISTA VIEWS DOWN THROUGH THIS SECTION. Didn't notice any vistas. Was trying to eat a cold pb&j sandwich while running and breathing through my relatively dry mouth. Effort only partially successful. On the brief occasions when I could pull my eyes away from the singletrack with sleet-covered rocks, the trees coated in glistening ice against the sky of clear, brilliant azure were fairy-tale world beautiful. I saw about thirty seconds of that stuff -- the rest of the time I was looking at about six feet of foot-wide path, sleety and muddy and covered with ankle-busting rocks.

THIS IS A NICE .50 MILE DECLINE, BUT NOT STEEP - YOU CAN MAKE UP SOME TIME HERE! Or eat. But if you try to do both, you will be unsatisfied with either effort.

ENTER LITTLE BREAK TRAIL. Race management isn't going to really mark this and unlike every other damn LEFT TURN CLYDE, they will fail to string caution tape across the way you aren't supposed to go so that you can blow by the turn and have to backtrack. (Didn't happen to me, happened to the group in front of me. I learned from their mistake.)

THIS IS A TEST OF YOUR TRAINING AS THIS GOES RIGHT UP TO THE TOP OF THE RIDGE - EXPECT A .50 MILE CLIMB HERE. The topo map does not really tell the truth. This climb could benefit from stairs. To describe it as "steep" is to overlook a perfect opportunity to trot out the word precipitous. I passed a group of four college-age people on this hill and never saw them again. It's possible that they fell back down the hill to their deaths. There is no drink station at the top of this hill even though I really wanted there to be one.

MILES 8 - 10.25 - LITTLE BREAK TRAIL BRINGS YOU OUT TO 4TH GAP ROAD, TURN DOWN THE ROAD FOR .20 MILE AND THEN LEFT ON METZGER ROAD TRAIL. THIS WILL GIVE YOU ANOTHER INCLINE SECTION OF ABOUT .75 MILE SO PACE YOURSELF TO THE TOP. Quit looking for the drink station. There isn't one. In front of me were other people slogging along slowly up the hill. It's not a dreadful climb, just a steady one. I passed the people who were dogging it and felt all smug.

AT THE TOP, TURN ON WEBSTER TRAIL. THIS SECTION TOOK A LOT OF WORK, BUT WAS WELL WORTH IT. WEBSTER TRAIL CUTS ACROSS THE TOP OF THE RIDGE. NO MORE INCLINES FROM HERE ON OUT. Broadly speaking, there were no more inclines. There were still rocks and sleet. And since it was warming up slightly, there was also mud. The mud was actually not an improvement over the sleet.

BEAUTIFUL SECTION THROUGH SOME MORE PINES. I didn't see this because I was too busy looking for the drink station that wasn't there. Also, was considering how to explain that godawful hill on the Little Break Trail to La when I had told her there weren't any hills like that on the topo map.

WEBSTER TRAIL DUMPS BACK OUT ON FOURTH GAP ROAD. HEAD FOR THE TOP OF MILE RUN TRAIL AND ANOTHER AID STATION AWAITS. Finally, drinks. They are still too cold to drink but I tried anyway.

MILES 10.25 - FINISH - AID STATION IS AT THE INTERSECTION OF FOURTH GAP ROAD AND MILE RUN ROAD. TAKE TIME TO GET A DRINK HERE AS IT IS ALL DOWNHILL TO THE FINISH! TAKE MILE RUN TRAIL BACK DOWN STRAIGHT TO THE FINISH LINE. This was a complete and total lie. It was not all downhill to the finish. It was downhill over the same "technical" shit that I did at the outset on the first three miles, except now the sleet had melted and I have very large uncomfortable rocks OR squishy mud for footing. I could try (and fail) to run on the rocks. I could try (and fail) to run on the mud. I could catch a toe and faceplant in the mud and decide that maybe it was time to walk. (This is the option I picked after I tried the first two options of fail.) Any way I sliced it, this section was a lot less fun the second time around. It was, to be fair, downhill until I could SEE THE PARKING LOT where I started. Then all of a sudden some bastard jumped out into the road because he saw me coming and shouted "Turn right, turn right!" (This is also where "straight to the finish line" became a lie.) There were three little orange arrows, all pointing right, sitting on the road to help illustrate his words. The parking lot and the big red finish line thing were to the left. I could see them. To the right was the fucking creek. Again.

Now, I was not looking to spend any more time with the creek. I had seen the creek enough times, and then some. However, the alleged trail led to a big pool in the creek, a big, knee-deep, rock-free pool. I was supposed to cross the creek. Through the pool. Which was knee deep. In thirty-five degree weather in fucking March. There were photographers, wearing waders, standing upstream and grinning in anticipation. They were sadists. I was wearing a godawful ugly hat and an uncoordinating flannel quilty and cut-off sweatpants over my UnderArmour tights. I was also covered in mud from a sprawling faceplant on the "all downhill to the finish" technical mud-covered rocks that were even less fun the second time than they were the first. I did not wish to have my picture taken. I waded through the pool, looking away from the photographers.

I carried on down this alleged trail, past my parked car and the finish line that I could fucking well *see*. I followed the little orange blazes further downhill, like a good soldier. I came to a fence. It had a tree cut to lie across the fence and press it down so that I could engage in defiant trespass. There were orange trail blazes directing me to follow this somewhat suspicious course of action, so I followed them. I was directed, by means of orange spraypaint on the ground, into a sluiceway that ran under I-80. This seemed like a bad joke, but there were course officials there nodding and smiling encouragingly at me. They were serious.

The sluiceway had six inches of running water in it, all the way across. There was absolutely no way to traverse this section of the damn course without splish-splashing in six inches of briskly-running ice-cold water for the width of a four lane interstate with a broad median strip. I was not amused. I splish-splashed to the other side of the interstate. The water was very cold. I climbed out of the sluiceway. I climbed BACK UP THE DAMN HILL (See? Not all downhill. Course description lied to me.) with my soaking-wet feet to the parking lot and crossed the official finish line.

Since I had stopped moving at that point, I began to freeze to death because it was thirty-five damn degrees out and I was wearing spandex tights and wet socks and shoes. *sigh*

On the plus side, I beat people. :) I was not the very last person. I finished overall in the 74th percentile, which wasn't terrible considering first ever effort. I could have done better and now that I have some idea of what is expected, I will do better. They're running it again in the fall. I will pack spare clothes, dry socks and shoes, a towel, and several blankets. It will be much better in the fall. Plus, more practicing. There's a special award for people who do both the spring thing and the fall thing. I would like a special award. (Probably the race management put drugs in the drinks at the drink stations or something.)

Comments

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

Uh, why are these things scheduled for March? It was brisk enough down in Bellefonte on Saturday, let alone up on the ridges. I take it this was somewhere up on the Allegheny Front? I didn't realize your marathon-whatever-thing was in our neck of the woods.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

It was at Exit 199 off of I-80, in Bald Eagle state forest. If you would really like to be involved in one of these as spectator/support, the Rothrock is near you, too. What's your schedule look like for the first weekend in June?

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

Schedule? Do people have those these days? I am utterly unscheduled for June. Wow, that's definitely not where I thought you meant by I-80 north of State College. That's the back-end middle of nowhere. Makes Renovo look cosmopolitan, it does.