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FLRC Newsletter - Sep 2003 |
| Forest Frolic 2003 Race Report | |
As I run more of this year's trail races, I become increasingly familiar with the commonalities - the extreme friendliness of everyone there, the great fun of bouncing along rough trails, the occasional blood trickling down someone's knee, the expression of disappointment on the faces of people who got lost.
But this year's Forest Frolic brought an entirely new experience for me - running with a dog. Not my dog, mind you, since the closest thing I have to a dog is either one of my son's toy stuffed dogs or a neighbor dog that likes to spend days at our house, going home at night for dinner and to sleep.
Forest Frolic, if you haven't run it, has one of the hardest starts I've ever seen. It's a fairly steep downhill on an extremely rough and rocky road that seems to have washed out badly this year, to judge from complaints from people who have run the course before. I like downhills, but it's hard to run fast down such a rough road in a pack when you're not quite warmed up in and in that trail mentality. Luckily, shortly after the end of the road, the 15K and 7K courses split (I was running 7K), so I went from being in a big pack to being behind Derek Dean, with John Hylas (he who runs downhills faster than almost anyone) and a 19-year-old kid named James R Jones.
I hopped around the terribly rough roots for a few minutes behind Derek, then found a good time to pass, and caught up to John as we started up the long hill to the rock pile. Again, I followed for a little while, then passed him and set my sights on James, who I could glimpse only every now and then.
After I'd gotten to the top of the long and moderately steep hill, and had settled into the much longer, though less steep hill that follows, I just about had a heart attack when this dog - a chocolate Lab, I think - ran by me at full speed, panting and wheezing the way dogs sometimes do on hot days. It was shocking, to go from a totally quiet forest to having this slavering beast come up from behind you with no warning. But he disappeared off ahead of me, and all was quiet again.
I don't have a lot of experience running with dogs, but the few times I have done it, I've noticed that they are much faster than I am for about 3 miles, after which they get tired and settle into a slower pace, usually tucking in well behind me. This dog was no exception, and a short while later, I caught up to him, and he decided to follow me the rest of the way.
This was not a good thing. Though I'm not a major dog person, I like dogs fine, and I generally get along with them fine. But this dog had all the sense normally attributed to asphalt, and he decided he should heel the rest of the way. Ever heard the phrase "dogging your heels"? I now know where that comes from. This dog was so close to my heels that they hit him quite a number of times on the upswing. Unfortunately, that didn't persuade him to give me a little more room.
Needless to say, I didn't appreciate quite such a close companion, canine or no, and I tried yelling at him, which isn't all that easy to do while running at race pace. After quite a number of tries, I finally settled on "Stay" which didn't have the normal effect, but did convince him to run about 5 feet behind me, rather than 5 inches behind me. Much as it was utterly annoying, I will say that dealing with the dog distracted me from the effort of running up the long, long hill, and it might have even helped me run a bit faster.
Finally I came to a stream crossing, which enabled me to lose him, not because I was any better at crossing the stream than he was, but because he stopped for a drink. That was in the last downhill stretch before coming out on the road with half a mile to the finish, so I tried to pick it up a bit, but when I got to the road, James was just barely in sight, and I clearly had no chance of catching him. So I worked it into the finish at a decent pace, finishing second in 29:07, about 50 seconds behind James. Derek followed me in about 30 seconds later, and John was fourth (after losing some time getting lost) in about 30:36. The dog trotted in sometime after John, and promptly plopped down in a serious mud puddle. I never did learn whose dog it was, and his tags didn't give any names.
Overall, I was fairly happy with my race, though I think I could have run faster if I'd worn lighter shoes (mud on the dirt road to the starting line scared me back into full bore trail shoes, but the rest of the trail was dry) and if I'd had a less draining week before. (Five days of little sleep and constant activity at a conference, with no running but lots of walking in New York City. I'm amused at how impressed New Yorkers are when you tell them you just walked 35 blocks - it's not like there are any hills or the like.)
cheers...
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