Year in Review

Another year in running has passed, most of the races and adventures that we conquered earlier in the year seem so distant, it is as though they never happened.  Here is a re-cap of some of the events I was lucky enough to be a part of this year.


1/1/11 - I started the year off defending my title at the Hangover Classic in Bristol, RI, winning in 27:57. The previous 2 years this race had bad snow luck, the course was covered in inches of snow and ice.  This made for slow and dangerous conditions, so it was nice to get on some dry roads this year.

1/2/11 - This date was supposed to mark the first snowshoe race for the TNT Snowshoe Team, however, Hollis, NH did not have enough snow, so the race turned into the Beaver Brook Snowy Slushy Trail Race.  With a small field of 17, I was able to take my second victory in two days, I think that was my last win of the year!

1/15/11 - Feel Good Farm Snowshoe Race... this is one of my favorite snowshoe races.  Feel Good Farm is an interesting place, as is the owner.  This ended up being the first snowshoe race for TNT in 2011, and for some unlucky soles, it was their first snowshoe race ever.  FGF is a tough place to strap on the shoes for the first time.  We had 10 Turtles toe the line at FGF and I finished 7th in a field of 67.  Unfortunately, this race has been taken off the Granite State SSS schedule.

1/22/11 - Whitaker Woods Snowshoe Race was one of our longer snowshoe race trips, heading up to North Conway, NH. This was a first time event put on by Kevin Tilton.  He had a great course set-up and we had another good TNT showing, with 12 runners toeing the line.  The highlights of this trip were popsicle sticks and a trip to Moat Mountain.

1/29/11 - A group of 7 made their way up to Center Sandwich, NH (Home of the largest dining room set in the Northeast).  The Sidehiller 4 Miler was the next race on the Granite State Snowshoe Series calendar, and also a northeast qualifier for the USSSA Nationals, which meant there would be a strong field.  I had a pretty good race and it came down to my first ever snowshoe sprint battle in the last 1/4 mile with Charlie Thierrault and Danny Ferreira, both of acidotic RACING.  In the end I beat Danny, but Charlie out leaned me at the line...it made for a fun finish.

2/5/11 - Another snowshoe race, this time in Exeter, NH for the Exeter Snowshoe Hullabaloo.  This might have been my worst race of the year, up until this point at least!  The path was super narrow and I kept clipping my shoes and went down multiple times.  The course was pretty cool otherwise...but this just wasn't my day.

2/6/11 - I was talked into running the Super 5k in Narragansett, RI so we could field a men's team and win the team prize.  It was a beautiful day down in Narraganset albeit a little windy.  With the afternoon start, I was still able to get in a long run in the morning and then attempt to run a 5k off of a race the day earlier and a long run a few hours earlier.  I was happy to come away with a 4th place finish in 17:00 and more importantly, the team victory!

2/19/11 - Snowshoe double-header...Since the Beaver Brook Snowshoe Race from 1/2/11 was postponed we ended up with a double-header on 2/19/11.  The TNT SST made the trip to Hollis, NH in the morning for the BBSSR, which by the way WAS my worse race of the year, then we headed to Milly's Tavern in Manchester, NH for some food and beer before heading to Madbury, NH for the Kingman Farm Moonlight Snowshoe Race.  The night race is by far the most fun of the year, and after running like hell in the morning I came back to run a good race, but ended up finishing 5th instead of 3rd after following Geoff Cunningham off course.

2/26/11 - The next to last snowshoe race was held at Northfield Mountain.  This was to be the first NEF Snowshoe Championship, it was a tough race with lots of climbing and it made me tired.

3/13/11 - 2 weeks after running up Northfield Mountain on snowshoes we headed way up north to the FINAL! snowshoe race of the season, The Granite State Snowshoe Championships.  This race starts across the street from Mountain Washington.  It was a nice mix of groomed trails and long climbs.  The race went well for me, finishing in 5th place behind 4 acidotic guys.  We finished out the year sipping on some beer provided by Redhook and acidotic RACING.

3/20/11 - The New Bedford Half Marathon, finally a race where I could show that I was in shape, getting ready for the marathon doesn't usually result in great 3-4 mile snowshoe races.  This race went pretty well, and I ran faster than I had expected.  I tied my PR according to the official results, and on the watch I beat it by a second.  I ran with teammate Matin Tighe late int he race, but couldn't reel him back in, in the final half mile, and he got me by 2 seconds.

4/10/11 - Doyles Emerald Necklace 5 Miler, It was a great after party, I don't think I raced?  Jackie ran a 5 mile PR though!

5/1/11 - The Cox Sports Marathon was the main goal of the spring.  This was actually the first time I had ever run a marathon in Rhode Island, so that was something to check off my list.  The race went pretty well, I feel I ran as well as I could with the training I had in the legs.  I finished with my second fastest marathon in 2:42:37

5/21/11 and 5/28/11 - We through in two USATF Mountain Series races before getting down to training for the Transrockies Race.  Northfield Mountain Race on 5/21/11 and Wachusett Mountain Race on 5/28/11.  The Wachusett Race went much better then the Northfield Race, but both were a blast.

7/17/11 - North South Trail Long Run.  Jackie, Karen and myself ran 35 miles of RIs NS Trail.  It was a great run in 90+ degree heat!

Jackie and Karen on the NST

8/7/11 - Because we are in the Brooks ID program, Jackie and I were lucky enough to get a free entry into the 1st Annual Rock n Roll 1/2 Marathon in Providence, We had no intentions to race this 1/2, but took it as a good opportunity to get in a long run.  I ran 17 miles before the race, while Jackie did slightly less.  We then ran in the race together, starting out EZ and passing all the runners that went out too fast.  You can read about it HERE.

8/21 - 8/26 - Transrockies Run...the epic run of the year.  I highly recommend anyone that enjoys running in the woods to try this adventure.  You can read about it here!

Stage 2 Transrockies

9/18/11 - Our Turtle teammate Karen Benway was planning on racing the Pisgah 50k.  This worked out well because Jackie and I had 30 miles on the schedule.  So we decided to make the trek up to the race and it made for a nice easy way to get in 30+ miles, while practicing fueling for the upcoming JFK 50 Miler.  Other than a wrong turn late in the run for me, it was a great day.

10/5/11 - 6:45 pm TNT vs NRA Showdown.  This was probably the most proud I have been of the Tuesday Night Turtles as a team.  When there is a race on the line, and the other team is trash talking that they would beat us to death, the Turtles came out of the woodlands :)  We might not have the fastest folks around, but we had the most team pride on this night, and with that we took home the big W...it was a great night!

11/13/11 - RI 6 Hour.  This was the third running of the RI 6 Hour, not bad for a race I thought up in the shower one morning.  The 2011 event went well, other than those damn cops.

Sunrise @ Warwick City Park

11/19/11 - The JFK 50 Miler was a great trip.  I was happy with my new 50 mile PR and super happy to see the TNT Women's Team of Jackie Jackman, Karen Benway and Issy Nielson, come away with the team victory and also breaking the Women's Team Record that was set back in 2002 by over 2 hours!!  JFK Race Report

2011 JFK Course Record setting women's team!

So those were the major explorations of the year, there was also running the Fat Belly to Fat Belly the afternoon after running Northfield Mountain and the Grog and Dog Jog on Columbus Day Weekend.  Not to mention the Run for Hope a few weeks ago, but I had enough recapping!  On to 2012, which I already started with a not so good race at the Hangover Classic, ending my three year winning streak.  But I followed that up with a great 2 hour long run today in the Arcadia Management area with Karen Benway and Zak Kudlak, so things are already looking up!  Good Luck to everyone with their 2012 adventures!

TransRockies Wrap-up

So all the racing was finally done.  We checked in to our hotel, went through our bags yadda yadda...showered up and headed downstairs to the hotel lobby to check into our flight which was scheduled to fly out on Saturday @ 1:45pm.  I go to the computer, put in the info and AHHH, CANCELLED!  Damn Hurricane Irene had caused chaos in the flights around the U.S. especially in New England.  So now we had about an hour and a half to figure something out before the after party.  I attempted to book another flight heading out earlier, and got to the PURCHASE button and bam...someone got the last seat before me.  So when all was said and done we booked a flight for Monday instead of Saturday and were going to stay for 2 extra nights in a rinky dink hotel near the Denver Airport for two nights before heading back to RI.

Before we got there however, we had some celebrating to do.  The final dinner for the Transrockies was in the Beaver Creek Resort Ballroom.  The food was great, there was some free beer, and good company with AJ and Keri Wheeler and Thor, Jay, and their wives.  This was our finally hurrah with these guys and we enjoyed every minute of it.

After dinner it was the same ol' routine.  Awards, photos, and videos...but this time it was an accumulation of the whole week!  There was a lot to watch and crazy how some of the events seemed so long ago even though it was only a few days.

Once all that was over we had to say our goodbyes to AJ and Keri.  They were not going to the 7th Stage, as the Transrockies people called it, instead they had to get back to their hotel because they had an early departure in the AM.  It was pretty weird saying goodbye to them as we had spent most of the week hanging out, and now we wouldn't see them in the morning and didn't know if or when we would ever see them again.

On the other had we were STUCK with Thor and Jay.  They were going to the 7th Stage, which by the way is the after party to the final banquet, and not only that they lived in Massachusetts, so it will be hard going more than a few months without seeing them...DAMN!  (I hope they don't read this)

The 7th stage was held at some bar I can't remember the name of and this place, even though was in a resort, looked very "Colorado" to me, it probably looked that way because it was a resort.  There were animals hanging from the wall, there was a red glow to the place, and it was packed!  We were fortunate enough to get in there pretty early and get a table for the 6 or us.  We had a few Colorado brews took in the scenes and around midnight decided to call it a day.  We said our goodbyes to the Kirleiss' and Newtons' and headed back to a night in a BED, no more air mattress for us!

The rest of the story is unimportant and irrelevant to Transrockies the race, so I will keep it short.  With our whole travel debacle, we took our reserved shuttle from Vail to the Denver airport...but we had no plane, so we took the Comfort Inn Hotel shuttle to our hotel.  On the way we passed a few dozen hotels, all nice and close to all the restaurants that Avon, CO had to offer, our hotel was just over a mile from those - damn.  So for the next day and a half we walked over to these restaurants for lunch and dinner, we ran one of the days, and other then that we sat in the hotel watching movies.  I was a little scared to go in the pool, and one of the vending machines had expired food, but other than that it was a good time :).

Finally Monday came and we made our way to the airport to get out of Colorado and back home to see if there was any damage and hoping we had power as many were still out.  We were good on all matters, so that was a relief.

Sooo...Tranrockies was a cool experience.  It was one of those races I saw in an ad for awhile and couldn't get my mind off of, so I decided we should do it.  Would we do it again?  Yes, but it wouldn't be anytime soon, the race is just too damn expensive.

I do think running this race is a cool way to roam the Colorado mountains without having to worry about much other than running, so that was nice and I would definitely recommend the race if anyone asked about it.

Before we left for CO, a lot of people said "you are going to want to move out there when you get back"  etc.  So many people said this that I was planning on moving out there before we even left!  But Jackie and I both felt Colorado isn't the place to be.  It is nice, but we still love RI too much to leave everything behind!

...and because I forgot about this in all of these posts, here is a short list of some of the gear that we had with us, not including all the obvious shorts and tops etc.
Brooks Cascadia
Brooks Arm Sleeves
Salomon XT Advance Skin 5 S-Lab Set Pack  (I carried everything so Jackie didn't have to)
Ultimate Direction Fastdraw Plus Handheld Bottles
Nuun Electrolyte Tabs

Final Results

Here are a few final photos...finally I can write about something else!

Final awards dinner

Wall art...

Some more of that.

This is what everything looks like at Stage 7

Stage 6 - Vail to Beaver Creek

The last day...

Of course with any long journey there are mixed emotions going into the final day.  There is excitement and relief, but also sadness that the event will be over, we will be leaving our new friends and will have to go back to our regular lives and not be just running and eating all day everyday!

Stage 6 would have us leaving Vail Mountain, starting straight uphill for a short bit, then running on roads, yes roads for about 3 miles, crossing over route 70 and switchbacking up some mountain.  Then we would come back down, cross the highway again, and head back up the other side to the top of Beaver Creek before the final descent into the beautiful Beaver Creek Resort and our soft hotel bed that awaited!!

After the uphill start we got into a pretty good groove on the roads.  We didn't go crazy early because this stage had the most elevation gain of all six stage with 5100 ft!

As you can see from the elevation graph, there was a lot of work to be done, so this 3 miles of road didn't have to be rushed.  Going into this stage I don't remember the legs being horribly tired or anything, I think they were past that point and were just running on there own.  I do belive that Jackie and I got stronger as the week went on and stage 6 was no execption as we both felt pretty damn good throughout the stage.  We climbed well on the first climb and the second...the last climb was a bitch and Jackie finally showed that she was human and wasn't pulling me up the hills anymore.  Once we popped out of the trees and onto the access road for that last final descent, it was a great relief that we knew we had accomplished our goal and in the final stage I felt like we were actually racing as we had some back and forth action with a few treams, including two in our division that we were able to beat out and finish in 8th for the day in 4:28:00, finishing one spot behind our good friends Keri and AJ Wheeler.

Once finshed we rounded up our suitcases etc and waited for Thor and Jay to come down the mountain, and we didn't have to wait long as they saved their best day for last and rocked the stage in a solid 5:02:23.  After they celebrated a bit with their wives we headed into the Beaver Creek Chophouse and had a celebratory beer.  Thor wanted a photo of this and as he whipped out his camera someone was walking by, so he asked her to take a photo, however it wasn't just somebody it was Tracy Garneau!  She was happy to help and we got a great photo of us enjoying a local Colorado brew.

After trading stories everyone went their separate ways to check in to our hotels and get ready for the after parties...that story in the next post!

Final Results!

Start of Stage 6

Running through Vail

Across the highway

Running through the trees

They don't mess around with trail marking here...that marker is 5 ft long!

Heading up the last climb

Stage 5 Red Cliff to Vail

Stage 5!  Stage 5 for me was like running the next to last interval of a workout, you say to yourself this is the last hard one, because you can always get through the last one.  In this case however the last two intervals were 23+ miles each!  So as close as were to the end we had two long days ahead of us, a lot could go wrong!

Today's stage started where we finished on day 4.  We were in Mango's to stay warm, as the morning temps were in the 40's.  We started on the same gradual downhill road that we finished on the day before, but in the opposite direction which meant it was now a gradual uphill.

After what we felt was a strong showing in Stage 4, we had some confidence starting this stage.  We moved further up in the starting chute, and since we were on a wide dirt road, and we are mostly road runners, this start suited us well even if it was uphill!  This gradual uphill was about 9 miles long.  After that we jumped onto some single track for a little more climbing but by 10 or so we reached the max elevation which was over 11,000 ft.  We stayed up there winding through the trails on the top of Vail Ski Mountain until about 15 miles where we started the long descent to the finish.  These were mostly mountian bike trails that were twisting and turning with some steep slightly rocky downhills, not east coast rocky though!.

I would say the last 8 miles you could see where the finish was below but you kept winding back and forth down the mountain, in and out of tree covered areas, which made it feel like you would never reach the bottom.  With about a mile to go, you ran into a much more wooded area than we had been running in, and it was rocky and rooty until you came out of this random spot onto an access road where you could open it up down to the finish.  We continued with our late race push and finished stronger in the Mixed Open Division with a 9th place in 4:20:41, over an hour behind Rickey Gates and Anna Frost!

Tonight we would stay in Vail and it just so happened that the US Pro Cycling Challenge was starting their 3rd stage about a half mile from where we had finished.  We headed over there to see some of the riders pass by, and since this was their time trial we were able to see some of the fastest riders start their 10 mile "sprint".

Since this was our last night in camp, the dinner was a little more over the top.  They had steak, chicken, salads, corn on the cob, grilled veggies, baked potatoes, and a whole bunch of other items I can't remember!  It made for easy fueling for the next day.  After dinner, it was same ol' same ol'; awards, photos, video, and off to bed we went, to rest up for stage 6!

Good morning sun...almost.

Welcome to Vail

Vail is down there somewhere

Creek of the day

Cadel Evans

Gourmet Cowboy

Stage 4 - Nova Guides-Red Cliff

Stage 4, I returned from the dead.  After running really conservative on stages 2 and 3 I felt good enough before stage 4 that I thought we could run more like ourselves.  As good as I felt, we were both starting to get pretty sore from the first three days of running.  We still started out on the slow side but right from the start we saw that we were closer to some of the teams that we hadn't been around since stage 1.  Stage 4 was only 14.2 miles but you start out climbing for the first 5 miles.  After all that climbing you pop out on the top of the mountain, at least what you think is the top, there was still one more climb from about 7 to 7.5 miles that we needed to get up before descending for the remainder of the run.  Most of this course seemed to be dirt roads that were wide, but when we started to come off the mountain there was a good amount of loose rock, which we navigated well enough, but technical down hill running was not our strength at TRANSROCKIES!

One of the cool things about this stage was with about 3 miles to go you began a 1 mile trek through a riverbed.  There were times that the water was just a few inches deep, but other times it was calf deep or more.  Once through that mess you popped out onto a dirt road that was a gradual 2 miles all the way to the finish.  On this road we were really able to open it up and passed multiple teams.  This was by far the strongest we had finished for the week, and it was a good day to feel good at the end because Mango's Mountain Grill and taco's were waiting for us when we were done!

Today's creek to bath in was by far the coldest!  We were lucky to get in and out of there before the temperatures dropped a little bit and some rain rolled in.  Finally we used the mandatory gear, but it wasn't for the race, it was for sitting on the balcony at Mango's sipping on a Guinness and eating some tacos.  

Once back at camp we had a lot of time to waste, we listened to a talk from the founder of Salt Stick and had a drink courtesy of the roaming Margarita bar.   And to sound like a broken record, dinner was wonderful again, with the photos, videos, etc. etc.  

4 days down two to go!

Up we go.

Running in the river.

Have I told you about Red Cliff?

Mango's

Our group hanging out on the balcony.

Roaming Margarita Bar

Some of the ladies were lonely, so they found a friend.