Lost on the Trail - The R2T Race Report

There I am, ready to go at the starting line of the Rails to Trails Marathon and I hear the megaphone saying: “Runners, two minutes to the start!” I check my shoes, make sure my Gatorade is open and look at my watch, my trusted Garmin Forerunner® 405, a GPS watch that will tell me how far I have gone and what my pace is. But my watch is not on my wrist. Where is it?!? That’s right, it is at home, plugged to my Mac to charge. That way I won’t risk theft of accidental loss. I won’t even deplete the batteries. That’s it. I am lost on the trail!

I have not run without it, or it’s previous incarnation, the Forerunner® 205 (dubbed “the server” given it’s gigantic size) for years. I don’t know how fast I am going, if I should slow down to conserve energy, how far I have gone…

Thanks to this oversight, I don’t even know when I am supposed to take my GU energy gels (every 45 minutes, if you have a watch). I try taking them when I see other do it, thinking they may have a time-based plan similar to mine. Soon I realize that if I do that I will take all five of mine within 30 minutes. Finally I decide to take them based on mileage, so now I have to make very complicated head calculations on when I will hit each mile. Something I can do easily at rest, but for some reason, when I run I can’t. Must be related to having my blood and oxygen focused on my legs and not my brain.

The first four or five miles where exhausting. I run out of breath and felt it was not going very well. Was I going too fast? I soon realize it is all stress-based. I have to make peace with not having my 405 and move on. After that things ease quite a bit. I get in my groove and plow ahead. Still, every time I cross somebody that is wearing a GPS, I am dying to casually ask ‘em: “What would you say your overall pace is so far? Do you think you can still break 4 hours?” However, I decide not to.

Temperature is good at the start. Something around 41 degrees, wind at 6-8 mph, low humidity and a nice bright sun. By the end of the race the sun will be a tad much and the temperature will rise all the way to about 61. This will most definitely affect my performance.

The race is a dirt trail, fairly straight and flat typical of courses that made the transition from railroad to trail. It goes under three or four concrete bridges (more like road overpasses) that break the monotony.

The fun part is the perfectly straight ¾ mile railroad tunnel. Since the race is out‑and‑back, you run it twice at about miles 6 and 21 (don’t quote me on that on that).

The tunnel is pitch black, so 12 gas lamps are sprinkled throughout (which does not help much). At the entrance, if you don’t have a headlamp you are given a flashlight (that is, a $2 Wal-Mart kind of flashlight) that you return at the other end. Well, that doesn’t help much. In fact, my headlamp is on my hat, which by the time I enter the tunnel is hanging from my belt to keep my temperature low, and I still forgo the flashlight opting for simply following other people’s lights and the gas lamps. I don’t think I do any worse than they do. In fact I pass a few in the tunnel.

Two other things are interesting in the tunnel. Just like a cave, it is very cold. I’d guess a good 10 to 12 degrees cooler than the outside. Also, there is significant seepage. As you run through the cold tunnel, you feel big fat drops of water falling on you. At one point, you pass an area that sound like it has a little waterfall running by the wall. I came out of the other side refreshed and with lots of energy.

Along the run I take a few pictures with my Spy Camera. A tiny little camera I bought just for this. The clip that came with it to hang it from my belt breaks on the first use. Luckily it is detachable, so I get rid of it and simply put the cam on my belt pouch, which is now crammed with GU I don’t know when I am supposed to take because I don’t have a watch.

Miles come and go fairly easily. The temperature rises slowly and heat and exhaustion take a toll around mile 18 or 19 (don’t ask me what time it was). Seeing the tunnel on the way back is exciting. You know you have a fun stretch and just a few miles to the finish line. This time it is not quite as cold and I decide to use my headlamp. For some reason, I seem to pass a lot of people there. I think it is a combination of the cooler temp and the fun of that stretch. Later I realize that those ¾ mile allowed me to pass and put some distance on the two or three runners that I have been jockeying for position along the last few miles. This will be enough to seal their fate. From this point on it will be nothing but footprints for them.

From mile 25 you can see the silos near the finish line. I switch to Eric Clapton’s San Francisco Bay Blues (something that is becoming a tradition for my last mile) and cross the finish line in 4:14:24. My overall place is 158 of just over 300, just right in the middle. A far cry from last year’s 3:59:43, but still a good finish for me. Don’t ask to see the Garmin Connect page with the course; you will have to trust me on this run. I was there.

The reward is just about the ugliest T-shirt offered on any race. The logo for Rails to Trails looks like a bloated bill that has passed through the US Congress. My guess is that it was designed by a large committee of people and that each one of them was able to negotiate an addition. It obviously has the tunnel, a black squirrel (Norwalk is the Black Squirrel Capital, something you may remember from school when you studied the different color squirrel capitals), it has a trail-like path coming out of the tunnel and a rail (Rails to Trails, get it?), some trees to convey a sense of nature and finally the silhouette of a runner (on account if it being a race). To top that T-shirt, the logo is not small, but covers the entire front of the garment. Definitely a must have.