ShoreRunner Summer Showdown 5K XC

I've done this race last weekend, but didn't have time yet to write the report.The race, organized by Christine from Shore Runner in Long Branch, took part in Bucks Mill Park in Colts Neck. I did it last year too and can't say I enjoyed it that much. I have this love/hate relationship with XC races. I love the idea of trail running, and really want to like it and do it more, but I've never had a very pleasant experience at such a race. Mainly because I couldn't get to terms with the fact that I'm much slower than on the road.

So in Colts Neck I decided to go by my perceived effort and ignore the pace. The race came after a night of heavy raining, which transformed the course into a slippery mud pit. It was still raining in the morning, when I got there, and the humidity was unbelievable, 100%, which is the point where you feel like you're swimming as you're running. I started too fast, like usual, but as we got into the woods, on the muddy path, I settled into a reasonably hard pace. I was more worried about not falling, and watching my steps, than about my speed. There were puddles of water everywhere, and I had to jump from one side of the trail to the other, to find a more stable, maybe grassy stretch. The sandy path I hated last year was much better now, with the wet packed sand.

The course circled around the park in a figure 8, before returning to the start and repeating the first loop of that 8. From the beginning I had my eyes on the back of my club-mate Rich, who's a good runner, and I figured that if I keep a constant distance behind him, it will be good. But on that last loop, he was getting closer and closer in my face, and after I was forced to stay a bit behind him on a narrow mud trail, but then in the open I easily passed him. I had the impression that he had slowed down, but later he told me he kept it even, and I was negative-splitting. The grassy loop to the finish was finally comfortable, but on the final stretch, I heard heavy breathing and fast steps right behind me. I went into a hard sprint, but somehow Rich found a way to outkick me into a photo finish, must've been a tenth of a second ahead of me.

My finish time doesn't even matter, it sounds quite bad, but what's important is that it was the first XC race that I enjoyed. Despite the weather, the unbreathable air, the muddy path, for the first time I had a great time at a trail race. It's just a different approach, and maybe I'll do more such races this fall to get a better handle of this. Oh well, my time was 25:26, but the course was long (like last year), almost 3.3mi.