Every now and then on the internet runners will ask, "So what's the difference between cross country and short trail races, *really*?," and as far as I can tell, the answer is: nothing. If you like running trails but aren't always up for 10-20-50+ miles, there is a wonderful world available to you in the fall (and maybe other times? But definitely in the fall) and it is adult XC. Like trail races, they are usually tiny and super-chill and friendly and low-pressure. No, you won't get a medal or T-shirt, but let's be honest, that's not why people like YOU do this kind of thing. If you just want to have some fun in the dirt and hills and rocks without the pressure of being out there for multiple hours, I can't recommend it enough.
This was not my first cross country race (I ran XC very mediocre-ly in middle school and high school, often less than mediocre-ly, actually, because this was before I had my exercise-induced asthma under control and some days I could get through the whole two-mile affair without an attack and other days I'd have to drop out at half a mile), and actually not even my first cross country race as an adult (I ran this same race three years ago, and another in Santa Rosa at the end of August). But I am definitely still very new to my local world of adult cross country and still working on getting a good feel for it. It's super fun to try something different and low pressure!
Why cross country right now, you might ask? For that, let us rewind allll the way back to the beginning of 2021. One of the things that got me through the darker days of initial hardcore lock-down in 2020 was continuing to run regularly. With all that was going on in the world, I had no psychological bandwidth for structured workouts or time trials or virtual races, but just the near-daily ritual of putting on the clothes and the watch and the buff (yes, for a long time we were required to wear face coverings even when exercising outside alone if you were within 100 feet of another person, which when in a city are you *ever* not within 100 feet of another person outdoors) and turning my brain off for an hour or two kept me mostly sane. (And props to my friend Jess for inspiring a group of us to sign up for the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee, a charity put on by the legendary Laz Lake of Barkley Marathons fame benefitting a food bank in Tennesee, the idea being that you have from May 1 to Aug 31 to log your 1,000K. (And of course because this is a Laz Lake race it is not actually 1000K but 1021K, iykyk.) There were many days and weeks where I probably would have been a lot more lazy without Jess's mileage tracking spreadsheets cheering me on!)
By the end of the holidays, though, logging miles and miles of easy solo jogging was getting old. A group of us current and former bloggers have Slack group that's given us a little bit of virtual community through 2020 and 2021, which I really love and appreciate. But for a while now I have really started to miss being part of a formal team, at least in some small way, even if people still couldn't really get together safely yet. And at that time, vaccines were on the horizon--many older people, essential workers, and those with underlying health conditions were already getting them, and the guess was that we young(er), healthy, safely-working-from-home folks would be able to get them by April or May. Our case numbers in the Bay Area were starting to fall off a cliff, and it really seemed like small-to-medium-sized in-person outdoor events (such as races) could very well be back on the menu by summer. And I wanted to be ready to enjoy them.
So, I did two things. 1) I reached out to Greg McMillan Coaching for personalized coaching. Don't get me wrong, I have loved using RunCoach for the last 8+ years and got a lot out of their system. But I was starting to feel like I need a lot more individualized, one-on-one attention in order to really be happy with a training program. I think I'd actually known this for years but kept denying it and denying it because I didn't feel like I could justify the additional cost. Pandemics do weird things to your mental calculations, though, so finally, I just said, "You know what, screw it. I am a super anxious person who has a very emotional, roller-coaster-y relationship with running, and I need someone who is being paid enough to listen to and respond to all that." I was very poor for a very long time and will probably never completely get rid of the little voice that whispers, "You don't really need that, ergo it is wasteful and selfish and YOU are wasteful and selfish if you spend money on it." Thankfully, I think I'm finally old and wise enough to be like, "Fuck off, little voice, it is perfectly okay to spend some expendable income on something purely recreational, I am a grown up with a budget and I can do what I want, leave me alone." So, for the last six months or so I've been working with a very experienced woman who has been working with Greg and coaching people through his company for the last nine years, and in a lot of ways it's been exactly what I needed.
The second thing: To try to solve my desire for some kind of formal connection to other runners in my area, I reactivated by defunct USATF membership and signed up for West Valley Track Club, a Bay Area group with a strong San Francisco contingent and many hosted group runs and workouts pretty close to me. And one of the things I was most excited about was the possibility of running at least some part of the PA XC circuit in the fall as part of a team.
If you're familiar with USATF (USA Track & Field), the governing body of most running events in the US, then the Pacific Association (or PAUSATF) is the regional branch of USATF that functions in Northern California & Northern Nevada. They oversee all kinds of events including road races, cross country, track & field races, elite/pro competitions, and even school track & field/xc. In the fall, they run a series of open cross country races that anyone can show up and run in, though most people run for a local team. Some of the teams are more serious or have particular membership standards, while others are open to anyone. There are team competitions where each team scores a certain amount of points for how its top five runners place, and also individual competition for places. You can put together teams for different genders and age groups -- for both men and women, there are open teams (16+) as well as teams for masters (40+), seniors (50+), super seniors (60+), veterans (70+), and super veterans (80+).
I think there are something like 8 races in all between August and December. I already knew I wouldn't be able to run all of them just from a scheduling perspective, but it turned out that most other people can't either, so the team really tries to focus on a handful of the races where they can get a solid contingent and have enough people to score in as many of the age bands as possible, and the Golden Gate Park race is one of them -- perfect for a SF resident who is intimately familiar with GG Park already!
The course was two 2-mile loops, with the start and finish in Lindley Meadow. I arrived and parked right at at Lindley Meadows around 8am and got my bib (usually there is race day sign up but not this year), then set out to jog the 2-mile loop both as a warm-up and to get a sense for the course. (I know I've run all these various roads and trails at one time or another, but not necessarily in this order, and I wanted to be sure I wouldn't get lost!) Thankfully, since Erin's club puts on this race, she had spent the morning creating giant flour arrows on the ground to make sure everyone knew which way to go, god bless.
One thing to know about any of the PA circuits is that they are competitive as SHIT, which if you didn't already know that, you would have figured it out while waiting in the port a potty line when you saw two girls hugging and chatting about how "OMG, I haven't seen you since the trials, how ARE you!" Also I remember seeing the women's course record (17:xx) and thinking, "Wait, I thought this was a 4 mile race, I must be missing something." Um. No. Not missing anything. Anyone can run these races for funsies, but the competition up front is STIFF. (I think the women's winner this year ran ~23:5x, PRACTICALLY JOGGING COMPARED TO THE RECORD HOLDER yet still HELLA fast, and that is over dirt and rocks and sand and hills and whatever else.)
As for my particular race, goals were modest. Yes I ran a lot of miles in 2020, but not gonna lie, I've been super bummed as I've started for-realsies training and racing in 2021 to find out just how much speed I've lost. I am very very NOT FAST right now, not even my meager little approximation of fast from pre-pandemic times. Since my two 10Ks this summer had both been characterized by going out at what felt like a conservative pace only to find myself shuffling (and in one case, walking!) by the last miles, the only things I *really* wanted to accomplish for sure were (1) running at a pace where I could maintain fairly even splits and finish strong, no matter how slow it was, and (2) have fun and enjoy doing something kind of outside my wheel house. (Also: bonus points for not tripping on a rock/root & eating shit!)
Given that, I didn't bother trying to shove right up to the starting line (which you generally want to do since everything is gun time), instead situating myself a bit farther back, maybe in the thirdish row of women (ie pretty close to the back of the very wide start line) with the West Valley senior women (50+). At 9am the flag went up, the gun went off, and we were off through Lindley Meadow, heading up to the rocky dirt shoulder of John F. Kenndy Drive.
I tried to run the first lap SUPER conservatively, at a pace that felt like pushing myself a little but that I felt like I could *absolutely for sure* hold for four rocky, hilly, sandy miles and that also did not put me at too much risk for tripping. In cross country I kind of feel like you have to run by feel and not pace anyway because of all the different terrain (dirt, sand, grass, some concrete, single-track, several short but steep hills).
I was super glad I had run a lap for a warm up, because I knew what the footing was like and could anticipate the more challenging stretches (such as the deep sand that felt like running through molasses). Of course most of the field immediately flew far ahead of me, but as in 2018 I quickly found a sort of back-of-the-mid-pack group that I thought maybe I could try to stick with.
I did not see any splits AT ALL on my watch in this race, but I was super pleased to find that although I felt like I was running fairly hard, I finished the first lap thinking, "Okay yes, lap 2 is going to suck from an effort point of view, but I feel okay and like I can *probably* not have to majorly slow down." I kind of felt like maybe I was slowing down a little but soon found myself occasionally reeling in and passing a few women, which seemed like a good sign. The last quarter mile or so was blessedly down hill, so I knew I could probably shave a few seconds off there if I had anything left to kick with. (Garmin said I ran the last .06 at 6:20 pace, so, yay???)
Erin was at the finish collecting bib tags and I think I pretty much collapsed into her arms, feeling like regardless of the time I had *at least* pulled off choosing an appropriate pace, maintaining it more or less the whole way, and not getting lost, which felt like a victory.
In case anyone was wondering, finish videos in XC races are just as glamorous as finish photos in road races:
- Official: 32:54 / 4 miles / 8:13 pace
Garmin: 32:54 / 4.06 miles / 8:06 pace
(For comparison, in 2018 I ran 29:04/7:51 pace for 6K/3.7 miles, though it was on a slightly different course.)
Now, I'm not going to lie, I would have liked to have run faster. A lot faster. But I am glad I committed to starting conservatively and finishing strong, rather than pushing myself to start out at the pace I feel like I "should" be able to run, then fading/crashing. So while no, I don't love the time, I was SUPER excited to see that although I felt like I was slowing down in the second lap, I actually sped up a good bit! This is the first post-lockdown race I've managed to negative split, so we are going to take our wins where we can get them.
- Lap 1, mile 1: 8:04 (the easier mile)
Lap 1, mile 2: 8:16 (the harder mile)
Lap 2, mile 3: 7:55 (the easier mile)
Lap 2, mile 4: 8:12 (the harder mile)
Another fun trick I've learned with Garmin/Strava is to look at your grade-adjusted paces (GAP) to see how consistent your effort was, at least according to the robots:
- Lap 1, mile 1: 8:10
Lap 1, mile 2: 8:01
Lap 2, mile 3: 8:00
Lap 2, mile 4: 7:56
Can't be mad about that!
It is very easy for me to look at these splits and think, "Wow, I....once ran a marathon faster than that." But I have been down that road so, so many time and I am determined not to ruin my hobby that is supposed to be fun and bring me joy by comparing the present to the past. So instead here is to looking forward, hopefully to faster times, but at the very least, a bit of fun and enjoyment in this ever-bleaker world!
Location: San Francisco, CA (Golden Gate Park)
Date: Early September (Sunday, Sept 12, 2021 this year)
Price: I want to say it was $30 when I signed up ahead of time? There was no race day sign up this year.
Deadlines/sellout factor: I don't think these races have a particular field limit so they can't really "sell out."
Field Size: Finishers:
- Women - 129 finishers (vs. 132 in 2018)
- Masters Men - 138 finishers (vs. 129 in 2018)
- Open Men - 104 finishers (vs. 96 in 2018)
At first I thought it was weird that there are separate masters (40+) and open (under 40) races for the men but all women race together; it makes sense, though, when you see the field sizes. The starts were 45 minutes apart -- women raced at 9:00, masters men at 9:45, and open men at 10:30.
Staging:
The last time I ran this race, it was a different course, though there was some overlap. Staging was at Lindley Meadow in Golden Gate Park, super easy to drive to and park given the small numbers. Sadly this course meant no access to the fancy flush toilets at the polo fields, only a few port-a-potties (womp womp). Clubs generally set up their tents near the staging area and at the three PA XC races I've run so far, I've felt just fine leaving my bag with the rest of the team near the tent.
The Course:
The 4-mile race was two 2-mile laps of the same course. A few of the West Valley XC veterans said they really hated this course, but I don't know why! It had a nice, long, mostly dowhill start and finish, only a couple of small hills, and the only terrain I found kind of a challenge to run on were one particularly sandy area and one area across an open grass meadow where the ground was kind of uneven & pitted. Most of the terrain struck me as pretty flat and friendly as XC goes. (I ran the 2-mile loop once for my warm up since it was a different course from the last time and I'm glad I did -- I knew where the hills and the sandy patch were, Erin's big, white, flour arrows kept me pointed confidently in the right direction, and I had a sense for where I could maybe push the pace a little and where to be patient and ride it out. Again I say: XC races are just short, fast trail runs!
If you're used to running XC in California, I think this was pretty typical, a mix of flat & hilly, dirt, mud, sand, grass, & single track. I am actually growing to enjoy the challenge of the different terrain, and the "Oooh, what's next!" kind of broke up some of the monotony of racing a 5K or 10K on the roads. If you've done some trail running, just think of it as sprint-trails, with elbows!
Swag:
Lololol it's a XC race.
If you decide to run:
- If you have a chance, jog the course (or better yet, do a tempo run on it) to get a feel for what comes up when & the best ways to take the different spots.
- Wear stiff shoes, preferably with a bit of tread. In 2018 I regretted wearing road flats so it's been trail shoes for me this year. (XC spikes or waffles might be more ideal, but like I said, it's not like I'm trying to win here. Or even finish in the top half tbh.)
- Don't be intimidated! Yes, there are some STUPID fast people at these things but there are also plenty of not-quite-so-fast people as well who are having just as much fun, maybe more.
Overall Assessment:
A nice little XC race in SF with some great competition!
No comments:
Post a Comment