Escarpment trail run 2008
This was a very exciting and rewarding run for me this year. After suffering a bad fall that injured my knee in January, resulting in a fractured kneecap and nerve damage; I’m still on the long road to full recovery, so even being able to do this long difficult race this year made me very happy. My goal was to finish the race in the time limit, and to have more fun running it – that is, not racing it. Usually I push my limits and try to place as high as possible, which is fun at times but is also very difficult and draining, and requires singular focus. My knee injury was healing, but very slowly, and I had to stop running entirely for a while, and then had to limit my running a great deal when I began again. Thus my training for this run largely consisted of biking with a few runs per week. Whereas I’d finished the previous three years in 4:24, 4:10 and 4:17, this year I finished in 5:24, which was about what I expected -- but the conditions also turned out to be absolutely epic this year, which made for a very unique, vivid and even scary experience at times.
As I rode the bus to the start I felt more relaxed than usual since my goal was just to finish. It was so foggy you couldn’t see the mountains, but nice and cool, and no worries of heat in the forecast. This year I started at the very back of the pack, partly to avoid getting caught in the initial stampede and partly to ensure a nice slow climb up the first mountain, Windham, which goes up 1700 feet in 3 miles. On the way up I found myself chatting with the people around me and I felt very comfortable, not breathing hard. Where I was in the pack we were jogging the nearly flat parts of the climb and hiking everything else. I couldn’t have gone any faster though, since there were at least 15 people in front of me, and it’s nearly impossible to pass that many at a time. The best you can hope for is to pass someone if they let a gap go, otherwise it’s hard to justify asking to pass. This is why in other years I’d tried to choose a place in the pack in line with my goal pace. Last year that was around ¼ back, in ‘06 it was 1/3 back, and in ’05 it was ½ back.
After some good conversations on the way up, I topped out Windham at 1:05, a very conservative pace well within my limits, since I ran 48 and change last year. It felt really good to be fresh at the top of that climb, and I was already enjoying the run a great deal. But then, no sooner than I had that feeling, mild frustrations came up as we began the descent. As a longtime experienced trail runner, technical terrain doesn’t slow me down nearly as much as road runners or those not as used to trail running. So when the steep or slightly technical sections came, the line would back up and I’d have to slowly hike down them along with everyone else. A train of people stretched out pretty far in front of me, and far behind me for that matter. I’d guess there were at least 50 people in that train. Really you could not pass because the trail was much to narrow and the gaps were very small. Not only that, people were very reluctant to give up their place in the train, even when a gap opened in front of them. Anyway I was able to relax and enjoy it, though I did miss running the downhills since that’s what I’ve always loved the most. It was funny because they’d all slow down to a slow walk for technical stuff, then almost sprint up ahead when the going got easier. I managed to find some old timers to talk to in there, and I’m thankful for that because I was stuck in that train for the first half of the race: 9 miles.
When we got to the base of the brutal Blackhead climb, I got off the train, sat down, and changed the batteries and memory card in my camera; (more on that later). But mainly I wanted to let the eager ones go up the climb and wanted more space to run my own race, so to speak. I really took my time on the climb, feeling good, but being heavier than my normal racing weight and not as fit, I wanted to save something for later. Halfway up the climb it started to rain and as we neared the top, where it got much steeper, it started to downpour and heavy lightning strikes were moving into the area fast. This was decidedly not the place you wanted to be in a lightning storm – at nearly 4000 feet on top of the highest mountain in that range! I mean honestly it was getting scary even before we got to the top, but what could we do?! It wasn’t a hell of a lot safer where we were. Near the top our little group ran into another group, forming a small train again. We got up there and the aid station volunteers were just great. There must have been 15 of them and I was as admiring of them as I was fearful for all of us up there of the lightning storm now striking all around us. It was surreal. Even as I was amazed at the courage of the aid station people staying up there, I wanted to get off the top ASAP!
As I began down the steep trail heading east off Blackhead, a literal and rather deep stream was forming on the trail, and quickly becoming a gusher in places. Even as I knew some of the people around me were perhaps even more freaked out than I was, they were still moving, and it was time for me to get moving. I came up to one small group after another and asked them if I could pass. I was now having great fun and was truly in my element running that very steep technical downhill stuff. That there was a torrential downpour, a deep gushing stream running down the trail, and huge ear-numbing lighting bolts hitting the hill all around us just made the situation all that more surreal. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed that first long steep section, and I flew down it.
After that the trail rolls for a few miles at a high elevation, and the storm was in full flight all around us. In this section things just got stranger and scarier. We were literally in the cloud of a very heavy powerful thunderstorm, and lightning was striking all around us with ferocity, sometimes every few seconds, at other times every 30 seconds, and the rain got heavier until you had trouble seeing things. With that it got very dark, looking like it was an hour past sunset in the late twilight, even though it was just after noontime. And it just continued and got more vivid as the miles rolled by up there. The trail was so wet it had between 3 inches and a foot of water on it for pretty much the *entire* rest of the race, until the very end where you negotiate rock outcroppings and more easily drained areas, but even there wherever water could pool it was, and deep. Still up on the high plateau though, towards the end of that section the rain got so heavy it hurt, and then I figured out it was actually pea sized hail, with some dime sized mixed in. If that wasn’t enough, it was a cold rain, and even colder in the middle of that cloud. Later at the finish people were complaining of getting chilled, and finished the race cold. For me though, stocky body that I have, the cold felt great and I just kept moving. You couldn’t see where you were stepping most of the time since the trail was a stream, so you had to run more carefully, (and that is possible), than you normally would on an extremely rocky, rooty technical trail.
I was very glad to hit the more open areas at the end of the heights when the first big main cell of the storm had moved on a little; it was still raining pretty hard and the lightning was still within ½ mile so that was little comfort. The real pleasure was when the trail swept around again to turn steeply down into Dutcher notch, welcome both because I absolutely love the technical downhills and because it got me further away from the full exposure of the storm. Again I came upon more people here slowing for the hard parts, and most were happy to step aside and let me run down at my own pace. This section is really steep and technical and it begins to strain your quads quite a bit as you get down near the notch, so that even those like me who love the downhills are glad when it’s over. The aid station crew were again a welcome sight; all I could say to them is that I was glad I was done with that section and that it was really scary up there – and thank them for being out there.
The next section begins at 12 miles and can be a tough climb to shift gears into after such a long descent. I was feeling good physically and I was enjoying the whole vivid experience, and hiking up that hill in a stream of water didn’t seem too bad. But then halfway up the storm started kicking into full gear again and the lightning was soon striking all around me. I was more or less alone now, passing someone every now and then. Since the top of Blackhead I’d passed numerous people and despite my plodding-in-the-stream running speed, nobody came by me. By the time I reached the plane wreck up on Stoppel mountain, the storm was just as violent and scary as it had been before, and my ears rung from the close-by lightning strikes. I’m not a religious person and I keep my beliefs to myself, but it was more than once up there that I had a reckoning and a wish for everyone up on the mountain that day to be safe.
I was very deeply in the zone for much of the race after the storms hit, as it took great concentration to run through all that water and all those storm cells were throwing at us that day. Once I had gotten free from the trains after Blackhead I was able to settle into my own pace, and I was comfortable the whole way in, and kept passing people all the way to the finish. It seemed the storm was staying with me moving west to east as I topped out North Mountain and was greeted by the aid station crew up there – yet another bunch of hardy souls who braved the teeth of a dangerous storm on top of a mountain in the Catskills just to support us runners. May all of them be blessed and I hope they all came through it safely. I kind of dreaded the next section, which was a long downhill becoming more exposed and ending on the exposed ledges of North Point, the very last place you’d want to be. But luckily for me, and I know others were not so lucky, the storm started to move on out as I neared that section, and it was an eerie quiet and nobody was around as I ran that section, and the trail-stream was deeper here in many places, unbelievably so.
I felt great and was very happy when the trail became rock ledge leading to North Point, where a small but determined group of aid people waited. I was glad to take my last drink here, and even though it had been very cool and nice, I wanted to wash down some Gel I’d taken to get me in those final miles. So it was with good energy and an elation that I’d made it through the teeth of the storm that I started down the ledge sections and the last 30 minutes or so of running. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed that final section. It was still really wet everywhere, and I had to go carefully, but I was going good and started passing people again, not that it mattered since I was in the back of the pack. It’s just nice to have a good finish where you’re not struggling. When I finished I was feeling really good and could have run another hour. (That doesn’t mean I’m not quite sore today given my light training!).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about how the knee held up, though I didn’t have much time to think about it out there. It hurt a bit more than the right knee – my knees always hurt some in a race like that -- but nothing that told me to bail out of the race. The only place to quit would have been Dutcher notch really, since it’s more protected, but when I got there my knees had both survived the steep downhills and the storm had appeared to let up at that point. Once it intensified again up on Stoppel mountain it was too late, but honestly I’d understand anyone who bailed on that day. It was truly epic, and I’m not exaggerating about the amount of water that was up there on the trails.
I wore a GoPro helmet hero cam in the race. No helmet but it comes with a nice head strap unit. The good thing is that it worked pretty good during the first section, and I have lots of pictures from the every-5-seconds-take-a-photo mode and a couple of videos. The bad things are that during that whole section I was in a train so the cam really just captured the backs and butts of the people in front of me! And though I replaced the batteries and memory card at the start of the Blackhead climb, it didn’t come out because the camera got wet somehow inside it’s “waterproof” housing. Eerily only *one* photo showed on that 2nd memory card – a foggy head shot of me. I took lots of photos and video in the storm but somehow it all got lost. Luckily after drying it out, the camera still appears to work! So no, I’m not posting because the images of the train just aren’t very interesting. A neat little device, but you still have to figure out how best to film…
I’m sure there will be many stories told about this year’s race. It was one of those experiences that lives vividly within you. Yes I was afraid of getting struck by lighting – for about two hours as it struck all around me with deafening loudness. But somehow that and the impossible to believe trail conditions – really that’s what you thought out there, like that how can the water be *this* deep everywhere – put me deeply into the zone and I had a really thrilling running experience that I’ll always remember. The Escarpment trail run is a truly great race! My thanks again to race director Dick Vincent for putting the race on every year, and also special thanks this year to all the people with more guts than me who stood up on those mountains in the storm to help us all.
