Sleepy Hollow Mountain 10k Report

Copyright Scott Mason @ scottmasonphoto.com

It was a day unlike many others this Spring; sunny, serene... it was the kind of morning that inspired thoughts of personal bests. But, that was not to be the case a few hundred miles north in Huntington, VT!! There, it was already raining and had been, apparently, for the past few days. On top of that, at Sleepy Hollow, mud season was ongoing and will be until August, I've heard.

I was part of a unique caravan with several stops along the way. I met Mike Galoob hailing from southern RI at the Dascomb park and ride and we rolled through Manchester picking up Ritchie Spitsberg and then through White River Junction, picking up Alex Hall. None of us having run this type of race on this kind of day, there was a lot of pondering about what competition could be like and how muddy the course could possibly be. In my mind I pictured lots of technical single track with select muddy sections to be navigated carefully... I had a number of goals for the race and priority #1 was to not injure myself before the marathon in 3 weeks.

We arrived at the base of the access road where many people were parking and walking up. However, we were informed by a volunteer that we should drive up because we are men and that's what men do, low-riding minivan notwithstanding. Well, we made it up! It wasn't as bad as I pictured, but the scene in the parking area revealed to me just how water-logged the entire hillside would prove to be.

Feet soaked instantly upon stepping out of the van. We grabbed our numbers and headed out for a warmup on the last loop of the 3-loop course. There was some nice single track and just as I was becoming comfortable out there Mike took a nice ninja roll / tumble on a hard corner coming off a wooden bridge. He had predicted mud and blood, and got both before the race even began!

The course wasn't as muddy as I had imagined, but the entire place was saturated with water. And the course was less technical than I imagined in some ways and more technical in others. For example, there were fewer winding, technical mountain bike sections but, meanwhile it was impossible to predict what hard objects (rocks, roots, sticks, etc.) one might find with each foot placement. This made me especially nervous on the downhill portions. Most of the course stayed on relatively wide trails like the kind of stuff you see at Nordic ski areas.

So... for the race. There wasn't an incredible amount of strategy involved for me. There were three big climbs, one for each loop, and my plan in fair weather conditions would have been to climb moderately well and make up lost time on the downhills and flats. However the ground was so soft that I lost an incredible amount of momentum and energy just barely dragging myself up some portions while keeping a running motion. I was up the first hill around 12th place and that's basically where I would stay for the entirety of the race. Arriving at the first sweeping downhill I was shocked at how steep and and soft the grade was! I did get rolling though and within a few seconds I leaped over a drainage pipe. However, the ground past the drainage pipe collapsed and I immediately 'super-maned' onto onto the trail in front of me. I got up pretty quickly and couldn't have lost more than a couple seconds.

Eventually I could only see the fleeting singlet of Alex's yellow BAA jersey and I gave chase but never really gained. Here and there I would make up a second or two but entering the last loop I had only minor hopes of catching him. Still, I tried. Grinding up the last portion of single track with him still in my sights I made a few errors, falling face-first onto the ground twice, losing all momentum and hope that I'd catch Alex. I watched him cruise into the finish I came in 15 seconds later for 45:10.

There weren't many happy runners in my camp after the race. I had hoped to compete better with the trail guys but, clearly, their skill and general ability on this kind of terrain is superior. Josh Ferenc won the race in under 41 minutes, gapping me by over 4 minutes. Over only 10 kilometers, that's an incredible amount of time. I wouldn't necessarily expect to match Ferenc on the roads but, I would hope to compete with with 2nd and 3rd place finishers today, JJ and Tilton. They appeared to have run very well here. Overall, I was impressed by everybody who established themselves as mountain/mud runners today. This is type of thing I'd like to do more of in the future except with a little less water.

The silver lining: Nobody got hurt! At least not badly. And it was pretty fun to slide around in the rain and muck. This was also the first race of the ATR series: a 5-race series on 5 different types of terrain. I've heard that scoring is based on a percentage of your time relative to the top finisher so, in my case, I scored a 90 out of 100, and I'm hopeful that I can score higher in some of the flatter races and perhaps finish among the top group in the series. Time will tell! The remaining 3 weeks are all about the marathon, though.