5 Peaks Albion Hills

What: Trail Running Race

Where:  Albion Hills Conservation Area

When:  Saturday April 28, 2007

Distance:  10 km

Website:  www.5peaks.com

This was my first running race of the year.  I usually do the Peterborough Half Marathon as an early season indicator of fitness but I had pneumonia in February that put my training behind by over a month so I decided to wait rather than having a demoralizing race experience.  I felt fairly good going into this race.  Not PB good but not bad.  I have been trying to balance run and bike training so that I can do both as single sports and compete, but I don’t feel especially strong in either right now.  Hopefully now that I am starting to add speedwork and hillwork I will start to feel more powerful in both.  Anyways back to the race.  Jill and I were not exactly sure what we would be doing for the race.  The Race Director for 5 Peaks, Running Free athlete John Klich aka Salty Dog, was expecting his first child the week before the race so had asked us if we work together with another volunteer to run the race if his wife went past the due date.  Luckily for us the baby was right on time and healthy and we didn’t have to worry about the headache that John goes through every race, or listen to the inane complaints after the race.  On the friday morning we met John at the race site and marked the course along with our 2 kids, RF junior athlete Colin and another volunteer Beverly.

Race morning we arrived early to help set up registration and I preroad the course to make sure that none of the markers had been moved and that there would be no complaints about people getting lost (mostly road runners that need a blue line painted in the centre of the trail).  I felt good on the bike and wished that I could go riding on some of the amazing singletrack at Albion, but I was here to run so I headed back to the start finish and reported that the route looked good with some mud to make it exciting.  Next up was the kids race that both our kids were running in.  They lined up in wearing our Running Free tri tops and had a great time.  After recieving their medals and treats they settled in to help Jill cut up the fruit and bagels.

The race this year was set up into waves with both the enduro (10k) and Sport (5K) starting at the same time.  There was also chip timing so you chose the wave you wanted just before the start.  I chose to go with the 3rd wave because I felt I would be one of the faster people in the group and would get the mental push of passing people throughout the race that had gone out to fast or chosen the wrong wave, instead of being one of those people being passed and getting demoralized.  It worked out prerfect for me.  I set out at a decent pace near the front of the group and held steady for the first 1.5 kilometers along some grassy doubletrack trails.  Then we moved into some singletrack trails for the next couple of kilometres with a couple of short steep climbs.  I was starting to feel fatigued and was starting to struggle to keep up my pace.  There was a girl with a Running Free shirt who had been just in front of me from the start so I latched onto her and promised myself that I would not let her out of my site.  She pulled away a little bit on the climbs, but I was able to close the gap on the downhills and flats.  At about the 4.5k mark the Sport peeled off towards the finish line and the enduro continued on towards the hillier section of the course.  Between 6 and 9k I struggled with some of the long climbs but did not allow my pace bunny to get out of sight.  I also didn’t let anyone pass me.  The final km was fairly flat so I turned it up a bit to try to catch my pace bunny who had pulled away a bit, but was still in sight.  I was making up time and passing a lot of runners who were running out of gas.  I was hurting but wouldn’t let myself slow down.  With 300m to go I passed my pace bunny and cheered her on, but I was running pretty fast and she couldn’t match it.  I felt bad passing her after she had paced me throughout the race, and pulled me through times when I wanted to slow down, but couldn’t slow down.  I sprinted across the line with a time of 49:48 and finished about the middle of my age group.  I was pretty happy, but will hopefully do better next time after adding some speed to my training.