Saturday, February 27, 2010

Reverse Ring = THUD

We tried, we really did. RDs Quatro Hubbard and Mike Bur (along w/ their awesome VHTRC volunteers) did their best to make the Reverse Ring happen today. Unfortunately, the trail itself had other ideas. While the weather was beautiful, the course was 90% un-runnable with all the snow. I knew it was a bad sign when half the cars couldn't drive into the parking lot without getting stuck in the snow before the race...and it's never good when the pre-race briefing is delivered by an RD (Mike) wearing cross-country skis, but we all gave it our best effort anyway.

 Pre-race shot of the gang...hoping for solid trail conditions...

...but getting lots of this...

The first few miles in the morning weren't so bad as the top layer of snow/ice was strong enough to support some weight, but once things warmed up to the 40s, it became a post-hole nightmare. Some made it a little further than others, but since we didn't have 3 days to complete this trail-breaking march, the 2010 Reverse Ring simply wasn't meant to be.

So happy to have found dirt/mud instead of snow for this little section. Note my star-spangled gaiters in honor of the Winter Olympics!

I ended up trudging through 22.4 miles (that took me 6 hours, and I was one of the "fast" ones!) before calling it a day. The last 6 or 7 miles were like walking uphill through a foot of sand, and quite honestly, I wasn't having any fun at all. I was pretty pumped to run today, but whatever it was that I was doing up there, the term "running" couldn't even be loosely applied.

In dry clothes at Edinburg Gap i.e. The Point of Surrender.

A good shot of what the footing was like once it warmed up during the day...somehow Tom Corris is still smiling!

There's a good chance I'll be able to run a Race next weekend to make up for this suddenly missing link in my training schedule...and even though the terrain was less-than-fun today, it was a beautiful sunny day up there in the Massanuttens, so I guess there's a silver lining to the adventure after all!

4 comments:

Chris Roman said...

Sorry D, will the snow ever end. Dying to hear how LOST 118 went for Jamie :)

Amelia said...

I'm curious - does the dog run some of the trail? All of it? Or did it just happen to be exploring in the background in the shot with the runner going by? Also, sticking around for 6 hours of the snow soup is about 5 more hours than I would have managed myself. Congratulations to all of you runners who showed up on a valiant effort.

Dan Rose said...

The doggy was an Aid Station mascot only. It would have been completely lost under some of the drifts up there if it tried to run the trail. Narrow paws don't do well to keep one on top of the snow pack!

Anonymous said...

nice post. thanks.