In retrospect, it was not the best idea in the world to jump into a handful of races, but I waited a little to long to pull out of Ragnar, so here we are.
Iron Hill Trail
Given the fact that I’ve been running about 30 miles a week for the last few months and I’ve still been experiencing some hamstring pain/tightness, I figured it would be prudent to test things out before fully committing. To prep for it I decided to try and use the Dirty Spokes Iron Hill Trail race as a tempo run to see if running tempo was even possible.
The Iron Hill trail at Red Top Mountain is basically a road. It’s a relatively flat, crushed gravel trail that follows the shoreline of Lake Allatoona for a nice crisp 3.5 miles. This seemed like as good a place as any to start. The race is two loops for seven miles. The plan was ease into things on the first lap and then try and raise the tempo if possible on the second.
Even though my hamstring wasn’t quite right, I have to admit it felt really good to get back out there. I started off in the middle of the pack and spent most of the first lap working my way through the field trying to find a rhythm that didn’t overly tax my hamstring or my lungs, as this was the first time I’d attempted to run hard in roughly six months.
The combo of it being my first race in a while and the fast course made it a little harder to be conservative than I expected. I let a group of about six guys string things out over the first mile or so, but as the first lap wore on I found myself picking off the leaders one by one. By the time I reached the end of the first lap, I’d settled into second place and told myself I needed to chill out. I felt pretty good, but anyone can feel good for half of a race.
I eased off a little bit but still found myself locked in on chasing down the lone leader. Like I said before, this course really suits my strengths even if I’m not at 100 percent. With about two miles to go, I caught the leader and at that point, I said ‘what the hell, let’s see what I can do’ and tried to lift the tempo all the way to the finish. I took the win in 45:34 and averaged 6:05 pace, which I was pretty stoked about. Despite some tightness in my hamstring, I did what I set out to do. Run a solid tempo. Getting the win was a nice cherry on top.
Road Atlanta
After a successful outing at Iron Hill, I decided to try my luck at Road Atlanta. The name is a little misleading as the race is on trails but it’s at the Road Atlanta race track. The local high school mountain bike team/league built a really nice trail system here for high school racing. It’s actually only open to the public for this race, so it’s the one chance per year to run here.
With it being a mountain bike course, Road Atlanta proved to be much more challenging than Iron Hill. There isn’t a ton of elevation gain, but there are plenty of twists and turns and what up and down there is definitely messed with my hamstring. Since I knew I went a little to hard the week before at Iron Hill, I knew that I needed to actually be conservative Road Atlanta.
At the start I let a big group go. That’s a weird feeling but it was the right choice. I ended up jumping in behind Sean “Run Bum” Blanton as we made our way into the woods and tried to stay with him for as long as I could. This was a really good idea. Sean started out relaxed and ran really evenly, picking off groups of runners most of of the way through the first loop. He was running away from me on the downhills, as I couldn’t really open my stride up but I managed to stay close to him. I tried to take over and do some work with about a mile to go in the first lap and he ended up having to back off due to some acid re-flux issues, which just sounds terrible.
When I left Sean, we’d moved into third and fourth place and I was able to slowly work my way up to Austin Bonds who had been running in second. One lap and 4.5 miles in I passed Austin and found myself in a similar situation as the week before. I was chasing Wayne Goff, who is 50 and kills it. I hope I run like him when I am that age. He’s a beast.
I closed to about 10 seconds or so behind Wayne but the course was really starting to take a toll on my hamstring and I knew I needed to back off. This race is a shade over nine miles, which made it my longest run in quite a while. It was a little frustrating to have to back off. The competitor in me was saying “go get him” but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.
The changes from up to down and vice versa were a struggle so I eventually realized that I’d made the right decision. I let Wayne go and tried to find some kind of rhythm that I could maintain. I cruised to the finish in a shade over an hour, which was pretty solid given my level of fitness and dealing with the bum hamstring.
Not my best idea but not my worst. At the very least, running these two races gave me the confidence that I could run Ragnar. No shot I’ll be posting the top time on each loop like last year, but at least I don’t have to bail on the team a week before the event.
Certified Rollers 