Philadelphia Trail Half Marathon

 

Nothing like suffering through the Philly Love Run Half Marathon and vowing never to do it again, and then signing up for another Half. Yet here we are again.

At least this time it will be on trails, not through an urban area, so I have the high potential to trip on roots, rocks - break my ankle and maybe fall to my death. But we'll get to that in a bit. First I want to talk about Climbing and Love.

I started climbing back in the late '70s. It was very much a niche sport with a small community. I would get to meet, hangout, climb and drink beer with a lot of pioneers of the sport, who went on to become legends. Me, I wasn't one of those, just a moderate hacker, but I was enthusiastic. 

I met Rick Sands, my long time climbing partner and friend about 40 years ago. We met on a cold New Years Day for an Ice Climbing seminar put on by the local AMC chapter. An inauspicious start. I was nursing a hangover, and Rick was the only other person to show up. We bonded over agreeing that the instructor was an arsehole. Two weeks later I invited him to go ice climbing, and we bashed our way up the first of many climbs and didn't die.

As I said previously, like hard core runners (<= nebulous association with what you were expecting to read), we would travel great distances to do our sport. 2 hours to Rocks State Park in Maryland, 3+ hours to Scranton for some hidden waterfall ice, 5 hours to West Virginia for Seneca Rocks. And the Gunks in NY every other weekend during the summer. Over time, we traveled and climbed throughout the US and Canada, and even France. Rick was a graduate student at UPenn and lived in West Philly. I would often come up and we would go bouldering around the city. High on the list of places was Livesey Rock in Fairmount Park, known to all the local climbers. A large overhanging rock, about 40 feet high, it was the local test piece.  It's been probably 30 years since I've been there. Our race today passed Livesey and it brought back memories. I spent many a summer's evening, mostly flailing but occasionally succeeding on it.

Livesey Rock with the 
runners passing underneath it.

Livesey Rock

I mentioned Rick lived in West Philly. One of our favorite local spots was bouldering on the bridge abutments and rock outcroppings on MLK Drive. 

Walnut Street bridge on our race.
Throughout the area, several "outlaw" climbing sites had
artificial holds added to the bridge arches

There's a popular running and biking trail that runs along the Schuylkill River. One Summer evening we were climbing on an overhanging outcropping adjacent to the trail. There's always a lot of pedestrian traffic. When two young women come walking by and started chatting with us. I noticed Rick was smitten with the attractive red-hair lass, named Colleen, and being a proper wing-woman, diverted her friend to let Rick apply his tongue-tied skills with Coleen. And I'm happy to say it worked. A year later they were married and now have two grown children, Jessica and Robbie. The Philly Love Run race passed by the Rick and Coleen rock which I haven't seen in many years. The memories of love and friendship carried me through the next few miles ... until my race went to shit, but you read my race recap.

The Rick & Coleen meeting rock. The overhanging rock to the left of the stone arch

Climbing, Running, Friendship and Love. Life goes in a circle.

Okay, we're finally back. My musings are often like trail running; lots of ups & downs, some wrong turns or dead ends, twisty bits, and the occasional rock or root to stumble on. Sometimes you die, or at the least, want to die. But usually you don't and reach the end. If you're lucky, there will be grilled cheese sandwiches along the way.

So how was the race?

race description: runnable trails LOL

Long story short. It was a stretch for me. The usual story, the trails didn't care about my lack of preparation. Killer elevation of over 1800 ft for the Half. While Jana and the other GRIT girls have been pounding the hills of Brandywine - Kudos to Jana for her Marathon yesterday! - I've been slacking on elevation. I've been babying my ankle, trying not to irritate it, just happy to be back on trails. When I stepped out of the car, everything was wet, temps were in the 40's and a brisk wind blowing. The swag was great, a nice long sleeve half-zip top in my favorite color, teal. The course, while it was rocky, with lots of hills, mud and slippery rocks, was well marked. There were a couple of moderate stream crossings. All in all, a good trail course. Aid stations were nicely spaced about every 2-3 miles and well stocked. Thought sad to say, no grilled cheese, but there was accordian music.

A moderate stream crossing
I still got one foot wet

It had rained earlier, so a lot of the trails were wet.

Evidence of a Grizzy Bear infestation in the park.
I swear I saw hiker bells in the scat.

I've raced cars for over 20 years and have curated a nice list of excuses when I exhibit poor performance. Luckily for me, that skill translates well to foot racing. Here's some:

• The 1st place 5K finishes I have recently done, mean the organizers have given me a weight penalty - achieved with beer and French fries
  
  
• I have artificial knees that don't bend so well. They should give me a 30 min head start for each knee, but they didn't.
  
  
• One of my feet got wet crossing a stream and the "clump, squish, clump, squish" distracted me so much, my pace suffered.
  
  
• My ankle hurt and I had to restrict the angle it could flex - this one is actually legit and happened.
  
  
• my headphones died about 5 miles in and I never recovered.
  
  
• they didn't have the gels I like at the aid station.
  
  
• there were grizzly bears in the woods. While I didn't see one, I did see signs (see pic above) If you look closely, you can see hiker bells in the scat
  
  
• I thought I was signing up for the Philly Marathon, not the Philly TRAIL Marathon. The Philly Marathon is flat. Who knew?

All in all, even though I suffered, unlike the Philly Love Run Half, I enjoyed it. While I can be a little bit masochistic - see ice climbing - I'm very specific about the pain I enjoy. Running on long distances on asphalt is not one of them. Running outside in the woods, is. I'll be back next year, hopefully a little better trained.

The Accordion player is a feature of the
UberEdurance races.