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By David Alden-St.Pierre
 So,
the Merrimack River Trail Race was a 10-mile trail race, and
my longest official trail race ever (I entered the Stone Cat
Trail Marathon twice knowing ahead of time that I was only
doing 1/2, but since those were officially DNFs, I don't count
them).
Here's how it went down... about 200 runners
lined up at the start (after the race director harassed everyone
in line for the port-o-lets), and after to "GO"
command, we all collectively took 10 steps forward and stopped.
That's because the course IMMEDIATELY went into narrow singletrack
trails. It was as crowded as Market Basket the day before
Thanksgiving. Anyway, in a few minutes the line of runners
stretched out and I was able to fall into a decent pace.
The first three miles were relatively flat,
and the trail skirted the river's edge. It was a little chilly,
but certainly manageable. The trail had a couple of short
ups & downs and small river crossings to keep you on your
toes, and at one point, early on, we had to run on a slanted
embankment underneath the highway. Anyway, shortly after the
three mile mark, things started to change. The course had
lots of short, steep hills. Some of the ups were just about
steep enough to crawl up, and some of the downs required you
to lunge from tree to tree to keep from falling. It was tough
going, and a little demoralizing to know that since the course
was an "out & back" that we'd be facing the
same challenges on the return.
To add some spice to the race, the fast runners
(i.e., not me), were blazing past in the opposite direction,
on the narrow trails. It was tempting to throw some elbows
of check one of 'em into the river, but that wouldn't have
been sportsman like. And besides, I would have needed to have
done that to about 100 of them to change my place in the overall
standings to any significance.
At the half-way point I stopped for a minute
to suck down some water, before my long, slow stagger to the
finish. I was wishing that I had some gu/gel/honey with me
because by mile six I was getting pretty hungry, and by mile
seven I was really hungry. I got passed by a few people in
the last couple of miles, but I was able to rally and actually
turned my fastest mile at the end, at about 7:30 (I knew there
was a chocolate chip muffin waiting for me).
I had set two goals for myself, an easy one,
to complete the race in under 1:40:00, and a slightly more
ambitious one, to finish in under 1:30:00. If you take out
the minute or I stopped to drink at the aid station, I think
I would have nailed the second goal because my total time
was 1:31:28. I came in at about the middle of the pack--105
out of 196. Either way, I was satisfied. It was a fun race,
and I can't wait to do one with my wife.
Jay Curry was there, but he was too fast for me--he came in
about 10 minutes faster. Damn him!
http://www.coolrunning.com/results/06/ma/Apr8_Merrim_set1.shtml
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