Li'l Rhody 2019

Charlestown, RI
Sunday, November 17, 2019

28th annual running of the race.  My 16th consecutive.  Sometime before I started running in 2003, the race changed from running counter-clockwise to clockwise around the pond.  Like many other races across the country, the numbers have been slipping a bit in recent years.

Quick takeaways from this chart:  

1) long course finishers have fallen along with overall downward trends over the past 5-6 years.

2) while two years is not a sufficient statistical population, the 4-mile course adds almost no costs and has helped overall.

3) long course finishers remained flat over last 3 years, even with a change to 10-mile this year and USATF-NE championships.  

Accordingly, we looked at what we can do to help stem the outflow.  Last year, following up on a suggestion from Jonny and feedback from some runners that 8 miles is just too long for them, we added a 4-mile event.  This year, in early April, running friend and club member Leslie reached out to me on behalf of the club, with a proposal for an additional possibility of increasing field size:  with the Run for the Beavers out for the USATF-NE Trail Championships this year, would we be interested in hosting the championships at our Li'l Rhody race?  Sounds great.

With the USATF-NE Trail Championships in recent years (Exeter Trail Race, Run with the Beavers) having a 10-mile distance, we opted to do the same with Rhody for consistency.  Interestingly, while the total numbers increased for 2019, this was entirely due to the 4-mile addition.

What would the numbers in 10-mile have been had we NOT had the USATF-NE championships?   Analyzing further, only 25 of the finishers (16%) were USATF-NE members, and of those, 7 had run the race in recent years, so the net attributable runners might be 18.  Although there is the thought that this could have been promoted more to USATF-NE members.

Onto the race ...

First half:  After a moment of silence for BLS, and some pre-race remarks, the race got started right on time.  On the way out on Sanctuary Road, Jonny and I ran pretty much side-by-side for the first mile or so, and we caught up on the contenders that were out there ahead of us and going by us.  I mentioned I hadn't seen Muddy and wondered if he was ahead of us, but Jonny corrected me and said he was "lurking" behind.

A lot of orange waiting to start.

And we're off.

I think the new course running through the southern end of the campground is much more fun than running Four Boulders Road (the asphalt road in the campground from the playground).  Obviously I'm completely biased on the course, but others did provide similar unsolicited feedback.  I was able to mostly utilize parts of trails in Kimball Preserve and Burlingame Trail, but there is one section between campsites where I just went kind of "Galoob style" with marking a path through the pines where there was no trail.  Jonny and I followed Todd Callaghan and another into the campground, but then the pair was quickly gone.

Exiting the campground, through the Bog Bridge NST trail, and back onto Vin Gormley was pretty uneventful with no changes in position.  But now I'm almost three miles in and both Jonny and Muddy are behind me still.  Am I going out too fast?  Are those guys just running smarter and saving some energy?  What gives?  Finally Jonny goes past me, but it isn't until about four miles in (past Klondike Road parallel section) that Muddy goes by, along with the BISS-clad runner with him.

Coming through the water-stop at five miles, I give thanks to Rusty (Justin P's Dad) and the entourage manning the station, and drink about 1/2 a cup before tossing it and exiting onto Buckeye Brook Road.  I can see Jonny, Muddy, and BISS guy ahead of me as they re-enter the trail to start the back half.

Second half:  5 miles to go, but these will be much harder and on legs that will be increasingly fatiguing.  I occasionally see the threesome ahead of me as I navigate the rock climb and Rhody Rise.  I remember being surprised how quickly I come up on North Camp dirt road, which means that the new course turn-off to Sammy C's is imminent.

Turning up the long, tight, climb to the start of Sammy C's, I see Muddy for the last time in the race (or so I thought).  Sammy C's is the trail we used for the last three miles of this race.  This replaced the final two miles of Vin Gormley trail.  This section is more technical, tighter single-track, and with a lot of sections on rock.  I really love this section, and as I mentioned in my pre-race remarks, some runners will love this section and some will be cursing my name.  Yes, I felt tired, and yes, it slowed me down, but never to the point of exhaustion.

At the end of Sammy's C's, running across Cool Springs Road (a closed asphalt road just before end of VG trail), I spied a runner ahead of me.  Muddy!  Did I have a good run through Sammy C's?  Did he have a tougher time here?  A combination of both?  Exiting onto roads for the final mile, Muddy is almost constantly in view now, but not close enough for me to catch up to, despite my best efforts.  The road section always seems long to me, but knowing every single turn and feature does help.  As I see Mike B at the final turn coming back down Sanctuary Road to the finish, I pick up the pace for the downhill finish.

Finishing up.

Final result:  1:09:42, 15th overall, 4th in age group.  Full results here.

Post-race:  Not everything went so well here today.  Immediately after finishing my own race, I was quickly advised that a number of 4-milers went off course at two locations, one due to signs and flags being pulled up after start of race, and one due to some confusion where the trail finish comes close to trail start where flags on starting portion were visible, causing 19 runners to run a second loop.

Most (but not all) of the runners that ran a second loop were OK with this and said they still enjoyed the race.  However, none of the runners (race leaders) that missed the final turn where signs/flags were pulled were OK.  At all.  Although the sign-pulling was certainly not due to anything I had personally done, I took the high road.  When I became a manager at Fidelity years ago, a leader that I admired gave me some sage counsel that when something went wrong, use the "I" pronoun (as in I apologize), and when something went well, use the "we" pronoun (as in "It was a team effort").  So that's what I did:  publicly apologized to all runners at the 4-mile award ceremony.  Not surprisingly, it took the wind out of some runners' anger, but not all.

On the 10-mile course, we got a lot of compliments overall on the course and course marking.  So it seemed to me that it went swimmingly.  Until the awards ceremony.

Based on the printed finishing results we received, "I" made a mistake and gave out awards to a number of the wrong recipients.  I only learned afterwards that USATF-NE members had mistakenly been omitted from general results we were using for WTAC awards.  I was truly so embarrassed about this and the confusion and delays that this caused, not to mention the awkwardness of having people have to give back the awards.  While all awards winners that were slighted were very understanding, I continue to hear how confusing the awards ceremony was all around, so it does raise the question of whether having the championships again is worth it, given the small number of USATF-NE participants and the fact that our biggest draw is from nearby CT, which is excluded from USATF-NE.  On the other hand, I've been to USATF-NE events where the only awards given are to those that are USATF-NE members, so that's much simpler, but if we did that, we'd be excluding the vast majority of Rhody runners from awards and I'm not sure how we'd handle the merchandise donated by local merchants that they earmark for our awards. 

Separate from the USATF-NE question:  revert to 8 miles next year, or continue with 10 miles?  Thoughts?  Lots of questions; no immediate answers.

We'll figure it out.  This is a great race put on by a great club that I'm honored to steward, and I'll be looking forward to next year with a few improvements from lessons learned.  A huge thank-you to all the volunteers and sponsors that made this race possible, and to all the runners and walkers that came out.