All righty, well I’ve done several events between my last post and this, but have fallen off the race report post-writing train a bit. We’ll get back on with a very fun 10K run that I signed up for just a few days ago.
This was my first year running this race, and I signed up with my friends Anne, Evan and Annie when we found out that it is not just a 10K run, but your bib number gets you into the Felton Fireman Pancake Breakfast after the race. PANCAKES! SIGN ME UP!!!!!
Mother Nature’s Drama
We didn’t realize signing up that this week there would be one of the largest wildfires in Santa Cruz County in the past 20 years. By Sunday the blaze had consumed 7,000 acres and Santa Cruz was (is) blanketed in thick, brown, smoke. The outside air smells like a firepit, and even sitting inside my apartment my eyes are itchy and my throat scratchy. So I wondered, how would it be to go into the mountains, closer to the fire, to run this race?
Turns out, the wind is blowing the smoke down from the mountains, and the air in the redwoods of Henry Cowell State Park was cool, clear of smoke, and nicely foggy. We arrived a bit cold (“dress for the second mile” they say), collected our race numbers and found all our friends before the start time.
The crowd was standing behind the start line, chatting noisily when the gun went off. This surprised the crap out of my whole section and we all jumped, faced forward and began our race!
Annie immediately began saying “goodbye” to us because she was going to race walk while we were running. We got a few lines of conversation in before losing her to the vagaries of pacing. Evan, as usual, disappeared ahead (he is Mr. Fasty-Pants) and Anne and I settled into whatever pace we were doing.
Gab gab gab
This might have been the chattiest race I’ve ever done! The whole time I was in conversation with those around me whether prior friends or not. Such a warm environment. Sometime within the first mile Anne and I were surprised by our friend Marty who we never see anymore since she moved to Grass Valley, and we egged each other on as the trail circled the meadow and connected with the river heading toward “the hill” in the forest.
Oh right, the 300 ft elevation gain. No problem.
When we first started out, someone on the sidelines yelled out: “good luck on mile 3!” They knew what was coming. After turning off the river trail, we go up into the forest (yes, beautiful redwoods) and basically continue going up for something like .83 miles. The hill is steep, then levels off, is steep, then levels off and repeats a few times, so you are never sure when exactly the climb will be over. I walked the steep parts and ran as many of the level parts as I could without wheezing. Anne bounced ahead of me and very generously waited at the top of the hill as I chugged along, all the while chatting with my new friends.
The Reward
At the top there is actually another little hill that you go up, but then there is a turn around point, which we all dance around with glee. Glee because after that we go down, down, down! We see Annie after we turn around, she is not that far behind for walking, and she makes animal noises for us and breaks into a run as we high five her.
The downhill trail is asphalt, and some of us have to go fast on it to save the knees (Anne) and others of us have to hold back on it to save the knees (Me) but it is pretty fun. I put my arms up and go WHEEEE up to where Anne is again waiting for me which cracks her the hell up. (my work is done )
So close, yet…
At the bottom, we are back on the river trail, going under train trestles and the like. We know where we are. We are heading near the parking lots, which are near the finish line. We know we have passed mile 5 and all we are thinking about now is PANCAKES. But the trail seems to have other ideas, twisting this way and that, and NOT leading us directly to the finish. We can see people snaking around in front of us, in seemingly the wrong direction. This is perhaps the most dreamlike sequence!
But then we pass the sign for mile 6, and now we’ve got .2 to go. Anne has been holding back this whole time. She breaks into a sprint. I break into a sprint. It takes some doing, but I stay right with her and we thunder down toward the banner. The crowd goes wild. This is because another woman who we have been leap frogging with, has a much faster sprint than we do and totally smokes us across the line!
PANCAKES
We go get our shirts (pretty nice, actually, for cotton unisex shirts that usually don’t fit me well. I will actually wear this one!) and get recovery drink from the nice representative from Fluid, collect Evan and Annie and GO GET PANCAKES.
Now this is not just pancakes for racers, it is the Felton Pancake Breakfast put on by the fire department. I guess the ones who were off shift for the big raging fire not far away were available to cook breakfast for us! We have had many pancake breakfasts like this, whether connected to a race or not. This was by far the best of these! They had fresh blueberries to put into the pancakes, and were making chocloate chip mickey mouse pancakes and plain ones as well. I scored three giant blueberry ones, accompanied by fluffy scrambled eggs and a plural amount of sausages.
To our surprise and immense pleasure, they had set up picnic tables on the covered bridge, which was an extremely happy and pleasant way to enjoy our meal. We sat with the nice man who was chatting with us in line and totally snarfed it all down.
Too much fun.
In sum
The run was pretty challenging, more so than most 10k races I have done. But the terrain was beautiful, the racers very friendly and the weather was inexplicably perfect. Add to that the awesome breakfast, and you have an event I will want to do every year! Thumbs up from me.
