In early September a Facebook post from a bunch of friends
saying they signed up for Stone Mill got me interested. A few weeks later I was signed up and started
training. I figured I had about 5 weeks
to build up to acceptable shape and I did.
Every one of my friends dropped out, but I decided to stick with
it. Going into the race I had no clue
what my pace would be. I’ve run 3
50s. One was in the snow, and two were
fatasses where I ran completely alone for 35 miles. I scanned past results and settled for a goal
of around 8:45. Which would be a 45
minute PR at the distance. Knowing the
course is very runnable I did a lot of miles of training on the Perkiomen trail
and the regular trails at Evansburg. The
trails of Stone Mill were very similar in elevation to Evansburg.
The first mile of Stone Mill is downhill on a sidewalk
before hitting the trails. I was
probably somewhere around 30th place and the pace was just right for
this early on. Mile 2, when we hit the
trail, was a 9:59 and that was the slowest mile for the next 20+. My plan was to stop as little as possible at
aid stations. I wore a pack with a
bladder for the first time ever. For
every Aid Station up to mile 24 I simply grabbed a handful of chips or pretzels
and kept moving. Kym and the kids came
to help me out and I would basically just get high-fives and keep going.
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| Photo: Ken Trombatore |
The course was very well marked. The only part where I was slightly confused
was I didn’t know there was a long (~2 mile?) road section leading to the mile
14 Aid Station. I was following a group
of runners who appeared to know what they were doing, but I couldn’t help
question it. We crossed a 4 lane
highway, then ran about a mile on the sidewalk, then crossed right back over it
when they realized we shouldn’t have crossed the road. The fact that we were on the wrong side of
the road is probably why I wasn’t seeing any course markings. But eventually we came to the aid station and
crossed under the road back to the trail.
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| Photo: James Williams |
Shortly after this a deer popped out and ran in front of a
few of us on the trail for a few seconds.
It was a big buck with a nice rack.
It then left the trail and turned around and ran full speed about 50
feet in front of us directly across our path.
About mile 45 I saw another deer running full speed. It was grunting like wild pig. Or maybe I was
just delirious at that point.
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| Photo: James Williams |
Everything went pretty smoothly and at mile 24 I handed Kym
my pack and took a handheld for the 3 mile section along the towpath. I didn’t want a full pack bouncing around on
that fast section. But, there was a
stiff headwind the whole time to slow me down.
I did 3 sub 9 minute miles, and they turned out to be the last three
miles I’d do under a 10 minute pace for the rest of the day.
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| Photo: Dan Reichman |
At the next aid station I grabbed a half a PB&J, and
that ended up not sitting well with me.
I spent a lot of the next section trying to figure out if I’d puke or
not. I didn’t, and when I got to mile 34
I was pretty miserable. I couldn’t eat
anything, but Kym gave me a ginger chew.
It seemed to really calm my stomach and I was able to churn on. When I got to mile 37 aid station my watch
read 35 miles. I was 3 miles to the next
Aid and when I got there my watch read 39 miles. According to my watch this section was a mile
longer than advertised, but I’d been expecting those miles to be made up at
some point. From mile 40 on I tried to justify
walking every hill possible. But the
hills are so small it was hard to justify, and when I did walk, it didn’t feel
right so I’d quickly start running slowly again.
I made my final exit of the trail just in front of a guy I
had passed. As we started up the road he
passed me and we jockeyed a few times.
He joked it was like a snail chasing a turtle. At one point I gave up chasing him and turned
around. I saw two other people exit the
trail and decided I didn’t want to get passed.
I ran strong to the finish. When
I crossed the finish line, the announced said “Tim, come see me.” I was the first 40+ year-old-finisher and
that won me the Maryland Masters State Championship. On paper, the best running accomplishment of
my life? 8:31:18, 16
th
overall, 1
st out of 66 in my age group.
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| If coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would've been state champions |
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