Well this one started off Friday when I drove down to pick up my packet. Went smoothly enough, though I wasn't overly impressed with the goody bag. Basically just flyers for Wellsboro stuff and one of them had a granola bar attached. There was a nice tech tee though.
As for the race itself?
Well it was early...
I got up at about 3:55am, out the door about 4:15am.
Arrived at the high school parking lot about 5:30.
There were a lot of people there waiting.
One bus shows up. Didn't make it on.
I think it was about 5:52 when (5:45 was supposed to be the last bus) the next one showed up. And then thankfully like 4 more buses.
It was almost a half hour trip down to Colton Rd. Same place the rally cars run.
So we got there just before 6:30. One last potty break and then basically just hung around the woods for half an hour.
And then we were off!
Now, I have to say... I wasn't entirely sure about the elevations... From their description it made it sound like it was mostly flat with maybe a few little hills, or that's what I was picturing. But from the rally car days of walking these roads, I didn't remember anything flat.
And in the end, that was all kinda correct... There weren't any big hills like I'm used to... But there was NOTHING flat.
So... there was a bit of up and down throughout, but more down for the first 2/3 maybe. So I was aiming for a 9:09 min/mile pace to break 2hrs, and I was beating that on those downhills, but not by enough that I thought I was going to keep it for the way back. Thought for sure I'd be walking parts. But no, I DID manage to run the whole thing. But I did slow considerably for the way back up. Ended up with a 2:08 finish time and considering the hills I'm quite happy!
Oh, also had a short chat with someone shortly before we started heading up again, she was saying the same thing about how on the way down we weren't looking forward to knowing we had to go back up. It was nice to have someone to chat with!
Afterwards, got a nice medal and a box filled with all sorts of post race recovery foods like chocolate milk and hummus and chips and a few other things. That made up for the goody bag. And they had water, sports drink, bananas, apples and pretzels out as well.
So I hung out for maybe 20 minutes afterwards stretching out my calves. Then decided to head back to the buses.
Well... I ended up right behind this like over 6 foot tall European guy who was just SO enjoying his post race high. "this is so awesome!" Every couple minutes. We got in line to wait for the bus and talked a bit with him and a couple of his friends who ran as well. It was nice to be around other crazy runners!
This ended up being a while. We waited for I believe over an hour for the bus. This is also evidence of just how sweaty I must get cause I was STILL dripping by the time the bus came. I literally soaked every inch of my clothing. And I missed any notice that there was a bag check at the race itself, otherwise I would have at least brought a towel.
So we finally get on a bus at like 10:40 or something... And we start heading back. We drop off spectators. And more spectators. Then... We start heading back a bit. I laughed it off, but obviously there were some mess ups with the buses. I guess they were saying the buses were so slow because they didn't have full buses going to Wellsboro. So they decided to swing back to the spectator area and combine the half full buses of runners into one full one. Now, why no one could have figured this out back before we got ON the buses is a mystery to me. And while I laughed it off, some people were getting quite frustrated with it and some were complaining that they had to check out within an hour and we weren't back yet. Hopefully they'll get that figured out next year.
When we picked up more runners, ended up having another nice chat with a lady from West Virginia about all the races she was doing as well.
It was also interesting to hear the number of people who were going to do the full the next day too! I'm not THAT crazy yet!
Anway, about 11:20 and we finally were back to the high school parking lot.
So, in all it was a lot of fun!
Next up is just a 5K, but those Spartan races are coming up soon!
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