Belleville Pond Death March 10k

Snow...it is getting old.



The lot

Snow was the story at the 3rd race in the South County 4th Season Trail Race Series, the Belleville Pond 10k Trail Race.  The day before the race, Scott Mason and myself headed down to Ryan Park to get an idea of what the conditions would be like for the race on Sunday.  50 feet into our run and it was plenty obvious, they were not going to be good.  I ran a little bit on the rail trail and also checked out the Root Run Trail and a couple other key places before heading out of there...well...before TRYING to head out.  That was after spending 30 mins getting Scott's car out of its rut in the un-plowed parking lot.  I spent the rest of Saturday brewing a milk stout and having a few beers with my buddy Mark, then heading out to Doherty's in Warwick to fill the tank for the race in the morning.

Come Sunday morning, I was one of the first in the lot, after Scott and two other cars (one being RD Mike Galoob's)  Scott was hiking around in his snowshoes trying to pack down some unbroken snow and Mike was out marking the course, also in snowshoes.

After a while more runners were arriving and Patrick Quinn and I headed out for a 2 miler warm-up...on the roads, I didn't want to see anymore of the snow covered trail than I needed too!  After some last minute preparations, we were on the line ready to roll.

Jonny Hammett took out the pace with Chris Garvin in 2nd and I fell into third place.  I was happy with my position and happy with the slowish early pace (after we settled in)...the only thing I was not happy with was how hot I was!  I generally don't over-dress and only had a long sleeve under my short sleeve top, but after about 2 miles, I just HAD to get that shirt off.  We were running in a line of about 8 guys and I started undressing.  I took my short sleeve off, shoved it into my pants, then took off my long sleeve.  As I was about to put my short sleeve back on, Garvin made a move around Jonny.  It ended up not being a big move, but I panicked a little bit and jumped by Jonny too, that got the heart racing a little bit.  Garvin started pushing the pace a little bit from that point on, I felt like I had to push too hard to not let a gap grow and tried to get back on him with every downhill, but coming out of the Route 4 trail section, he had a gap that was just enough that I couldn't latch back on.

Course recon on Saturday

We entered the single track trails that lead back to the rail trail and I worked hard, but I felt with every step I was losing a little ground.  Coming back onto the straight rail trail, I could see Chris and started pushing...getting the pace back under 7 mins, but the trail was soft and for every 5 good steps you got, there were a few shitty ones.  It was getting a bit frustrating!  I was happy to get on the Root Run Trail and up and over the bridge...up until I had to go around that stupid baseball field.  It reminded me of Snowshoe Nationals in 2010, just a whole lot of mashed potato snow.  After getting through that mess, the race was finally over.  It took approximately 10 mins longer than last year, but better than the hour that I thought it might take, the trails were in better shape than they were in the day before for sure.

After the race Patrick and I headed out for what ended up being almost 50 mins of a cool down, crossing the frozen Belleville Pond to ensure it wasn't any longer than that.  We missed the awards, but I picked up a bottle of BBC Golden Spike before leaving.  Check out the FULL RESULTS and PHOTOS by Scott Mason.

After the race Turtles headed over to the Oak Hill Tavern to enjoy some beer and food.  Definitely another successful race in the series.  Since the 4th race in the 5 race series isn't until March 22nd, I expect this snow will be melted and we will be happily be running on dirt!

Before that though, I WILL be running on more snow...but in snowshoes.  This weekend is my favorite snowshoe race, the Kingman Farm Moonlight Snowshoe Race.  That will be followed by the National Snowshoe Championship on March 1st.  Hopefully the lower leg soreness that this race and the WTAC guys caused will be gone by then!