Run for the Pumpkins 2020

Westerly, RI

Sunday, November 3, 2020

Another year, another great event!  

This is snipped from SNERRO's website, with a link
back to ours.  Pretty cool!
---
The three races are all coming to fruition,
but I wasn't always convinced of that.

As Race Director, I was on pins and needles waiting for the state permit approval.  The town approval came in mere days and USATF approval in a couple of weeks, but the state approval took over a month.  This is why I normally apply for the state permit in March, but obviously that couldn't happen in this pandemic year when nearly everything shut down in the spring.  The state permit approval came through less than 48 hours before the event, and with it a caveat that no more than 75 participants in the 5K/8K combined, so we scrambled to shut down registration as we were already one over.

Despite capacity reached, registration closed, and all of this prominently on our home page, I continued to get e-mails and several phone calls asking how people could get registered.  We even had runners show up race day hoping to get the spot of a no-show, but every single person who registered showed up to run!  I felt badly turning people away, but it was necessary to follow the letter of the state permit.

WTAC registration setup & screening area

The Town Recreation Department had a table setup as well,
and was giving away town cinch sacs.
Really nice to have the town directly participating again.

Race morning went smoothly.  We had a great crew to show up and handle everything from course marking to parking to COVID screening and check-in.  Showed up two hours early, setup my annual 7' tepee out of sticks I could find, and once the rest of the crew arrived, we split into different tasks to mark the course with flags, signs, ghosts, and pumpkin mile markers.  All went smoothly and we had plenty of time before race we returned.  Another crew had setup the start/finish, including the socially distanced staggered start cones.

In COVID masks, from left to right:
Me, Westerly Town Manager Mark Rooney,
Interim Town Recreation Director Julia Beasley

First loop:  I was seeded 11th overall, based upon self-submitted recent 5K times or estimates, and as we were running in USATF-mandated maximum wave sizes of 10, that meant I was in the second wave.  I suppose as RD I could have gamed it and no one would have been the wiser, but that's not how I roll and I do have some integrity.  After getting the first waved situated, I turned over the mic to SNERRO and they ran the start from there.  As opposed to the 10-second waves at the NH 10-Miler two months ago, 30 seconds between waves here seemed long.

I'm on right, starting in Wave 2, as subsequent waves are lined up 
socially distanced behind me.

With a wave of only ten, we had plenty of room and didn't have to jockey for positioning going into the trails like usual.  A high schooler passed me on the uphill, and I didn't care as he was a 5K'er.  At the course split, Jeff V as always did a fantastic job recognizing the subtle difference in orange 5K bibs versus orange 8K bibs and directed each on their proper path with a wave of his yellow flag.

A masked Jeff V doing an awesome job
as course marshal at 5K/8K intersections

Passing a ghost on my left,
while giving a thumbs-up to videographer
Seth on my right

And here's Seth's video output.
You can find the neat short video here

At just over a mile in, I caught and passed Jonny.  This meant he wasn't having his best day out there, and I also knew he had been nursing a persistent injury.  He was still quite cordial with his trademark "What's up, Jeff", and I didn't count out the possibility that he'd be back after me.  I continued through the upper field with Jonny in tow, bombed the steep downhill, and that carried me back to the tepee for Round Two.

Second loop:  We turn off the wider XC course onto twisty, uphill single-track of "Pumpkins Connector".  At times I can see Muddy and another competitor but they're really much further ahead of me due to the twists.  This is the toughest part of the course and I'm hoping it will give me some separation.  Indeed, at switchbacks, I can not see anyone behind me, even in the distance.  We come out of the trail, pass Jeff V, and head into Woody Hill.

Halloween themed course marking

After crossing Woody Hill Road (dirt), the next mile is pretty flat and very non-technical.  What is the antonym of "technical"?   I think I let my guard down here and now running "as an island", I could have and should have run faster.  After one short twisty trail that we built (with landowner permission) a few years back to bypass rocky scree, we head into Hansel & Gretel trail with about 1.5 miles to go.  

It is on Hansel & Gretel in the pine forest that I start to catch up to back-of-the-pack 5K'ers.  It might have been a little earlier than normal this year due to staggered starts, but no issue at all as they hear me coming (or perhaps heard me breathing like a dinosaur) and they moved off the trail and out of my way.  I surprisingly finished Hansel & Gretel in my best effort ever, as I will find out later on:

Not that I don't love Hansel & Gretel, but now here comes my favorite part of the race:  a downhill finish!  We have a nearly constant decline for 3/4 mile, dropping about 140'.  Exiting the trails back onto the Bradford Preserve field, it's just a couple tenths of a mile to the finishing chute.

2020 finish

2019 finish:
same time of year (1st Saturday of October)
in both 2019 and 2020,
and same approximate spot,
but look at the difference in grass,
showing just how dry it is this year.
(There is no irrigation at this field or other 
dependent factor to explain this.)

Finishing.  Note the difference in clock time
vs net time (below) is 30 seconds due to starting in
second wave.

Final results:  34:15, 9th out of 37 in 8K.  2nd in age group.  Full results here.

Although there was no awards ceremony today due to COVID, I was still able to catch up with a few runners, as well as my Mom spectating (my brother, sister-in-law, and niece were running as well), so that was good.  It was also great to have a kids' run for the first time this year (summer kids' runs were cancelled due to COVID).  Then it was back out in the woods with Muddy and Justin P to clean up the course.  I'll end this post with the same words as I started it:  Another year, another great event!

WTAC team pic, with most in masks.  A weird sight in any other year!
(l-r:  Seb, Chris, Rosie, Jeff, Schane, Justin P, Justin "Muddy" B, Paul,
Sharon, Steve, Bill, Rose, Erin, with several others already having left)