July 20, 2024
Our Vermont 5K was part of the Western New Hampshire Trail Running Series. That may seem odd, but such things can happen in the borderlands.
The Saturday morning trail run wound through the forests of the Hartford Conservation Area in Hartford, Vermont, just across the Connecticut River from Lebanon, New Hampshire. The tree canopy shaded us from the pumping sun, but it didn’t flatten out the hills. There is a reason why the event is called the Hurricane Hill Run and not the Hartford Flats Stroll.
We encountered the first hill before the race even started, as the starting line was ¾ mile upslope from the parking and registration area. Mercifully, they had a bus to shuttle the runners up to the start. Mercy drove away with the bus, though. To quote the race website, “Both courses start on a relatively flat logging road but you soon encounter 2 short but steep climbs that’ll have you questioning your sanity for doing this!” Such enthusiasm. Often being seasoned runners themselves, race organizers tend to have a can-do attitude when describing a course. So, when they cap a question of sanity with an exclamation point, it gets your attention.
Our mental stability remained unexamined, but there was some serious uphill in the first mile. It was the kind of uphill that crosses the threshold from tiring to painful. The kind that levels off with a false summit before pitching up again, just to mess with you. It was also the kind of hill you can walk instead of run without suffering an ego-blow. The return ratio of energy expended to time saved made walking the better choice. Power walking the upper half of the hill, Ryan even passed a number of people who were attempting to run its full length.
The race was mostly downhill after the first mile, which presented its own challenges. The downhill speed, uneven terrain, embedded rocks, raised tree roots, and hairpin turns on narrow single track were hard on the joints and made it a challenge to stay upright and in control. The trailside was scattered with runners walking off rolled ankles, and some looking for their glasses.
This was the first of our races in which the course itself was a factor to be managed. Beyond the usual managing of fatigue, we had to devote mental energy to the physical aspect of navigating the course. We had to manage variations in energy expenditure, running technique, stride length, foot placement, turn torque, acceleration, and deceleration. We had to devote energy to slowing ourselves down to stay in control on the downhills. There was no getting into a rhythm or zone amidst the continually changing pitch, direction, and terrain. If it had been a bike race, there would have been a lot of shifting, braking, turning, and line management.
Julie once again decided that 3.1 miles was the wrong distance for a 5K race. With the uphills of the first mile behind her, she decided to give herself a fresh challenge by ignoring a turn arrow and running two extra miles. She finished 6th of 7 in her age group, which might have something to do with running a five mile 5K. But she did finish 2nd of 7 among the extra mile group, making her queen of the island of mis-turned runners.
Ryan, having run a measly 3.1 miles, finished 2nd in his age group, which becomes less impressive upon learning his age group consisted of just four people. Being a trail run, and a hilly one at that, the times were a bit slower than typical for a 5K. The overall winner came in at 21:48. The top female finisher came in 6th overall with a time of 27:12.
Of the races we’ve done so far, trail runs seem to have a smaller field and a greater feeling of camaraderie. That was the case with the Hurricane Hill 5K, making it a fun race despite the hills and the heat.
It was also a fun post-race, as we were able to meet up with Ryan’s college roommate, Peter, who made the ten-minute drive to the race site from his home in Hanover, New Hampshire. We set up chairs outside the van, pulled down our exterior folding table for our drinks, and ate pastries Peter brought us from a local farmers market. It was a true van life moment – our patio was a parking lot, and that was just fine. We’ve been in the vicinity of various friends and family on this trip, but it hasn’t always worked out to see them. It was nice that it worked out in this case.
Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds
Okay, okay. This is definitely a “fool me once…fool me twice situation” for Julie. So let’s just get right to addressing the elephant on the race course…TWO races where Julie missed a course marker? That whole “fluke” theory of the Rhode Island 5K lore is starting to look suspicious. But, since 3 times makes a pattern, Julie is holding onto hope that this situation will be capped at 2 races out of 51 and we can leave it at that. In Julie’s meager defense, this time, she was one of 7 people that missed this marker, about 4 of those before her and 2 of those missed it after her…so…yea.
Okay, let’s get to our “see what happened was…”.
See, what happened was…as we lined up for the race and the race announcer used his portable speaker to make his announcements heard over the heads of the pile of folks lined up for this self-proclaimed insanity, Julie’s ears perked right up when he said the following prophetic words, “And, this course is VERY well marked, I have checked it and double checked it. So – if you miss a marker, that’s on you!” Clearly, this is a man who has lost racers before and received some complaints. He was, pre-race, issuing his warning, handing the baton of responsibility to the runners and officially absolving himself of what might come. Julie immediately shot a glance at Ryan. Julie could not help but feel this warning was specifically for her. Had her new reputation preceded her? Probably not, but the gauntlet was thrown down. Julie surged with a sense of definitive focus and commitment to pay a ridiculous amount of attention to those markers and cross the line at a mere 3.1 miles. Alas, despite the resolve, ‘twas not to be.
So, the race started and Julie came out with a nice slow jog in the 10’s, ready to take it easy up to and through the infamous hills ahead. She did her best to do a slow jog up the first one thinking she was conquering the “Hurricane Hill” of the race. When she crested the top of it she thought, that was tough, but not TOO bad. Well. Yea. That’s because, nope. That was the piddly warm up hill. Then the metaphorical storm came down and came down hard…when she got to the base of the real “Hurricane Hill”, she had a moment of realization – looking up at a long stream of walkers and slow joggers that looked like they were on a sad pilgrimage of sorts. Julie joined in and alternated between a slow (read VERY slow) jog and a power walk. It hurt. But Julie was feeling “okay” ish and looking forward to the promised “mostly downhill” that remained. This promise of lots of downhill would play a role in her future follies. As Julie went on to finish the first mile she saw a young man on the ground just off the trail. Knowing she wasn’t trying to break any records this race, she stopped to check if he was okay. “I tripped and twisted my ankle.” he said…”But I’m fine. I can run except, I dropped my glasses and I can’t find them.” “I’ll help you find them” Julie said, hoping two pairs of eyes would do better than one and that it should be a quick find. No dice, after at least a minute, maybe two of looking around there were no glasses to be found. The runner thanked her for trying and said he would call the race organizers to come help and pick him up. Julie left mildly disappointed that her attempt to be helpful was fruitless, but carried on, now even more recovered from the hill after this little stop. She finished mile one at a respectable for this particular race, especially considering the extra stop, pace of 11:26.
After the hills had been scaled, Julie was happy to see a return to a little bit of form as she cruised through the cool of the forest on an otherwise hot summer day at a fast clip, fluctuating between 7:40 and 8:20. Somewhere between mile 2 and 3 her pace slowed way down to a jog. Why? Because her and the four and then five people around her were all chatting and looking around, all trying to evaluate if they had lost the trail or not. They were no longer in the woods, but out on an open to the sky country road. All of them were aware they hadn’t seen a trail marker in a while. Each of them asked the other if they had run this race before. Unfortunately, they were all newbies to the race, though Julie was the only out-of-towner. Eventually, they all came to a stop. Julie thought, let’s look on the race map. Unfortunately, Julie’s phone battery was starting to run low on juice so the screen was too dark for her to see and too dark to even find the brightness monitor so that she could have raised the brightness just for long enough to call up the map. Another off course participant tried to pull up the course map but, for this particular course, they posted the course map on Garmin and the person didn’t have a Garmin connect account. Alas. They had no map to reference. They all wondered if they had missed a marker or if they were indeed on the right track. Unfortunately, when another runner came through towards them behind them, they all made the VERY wrong assumption that that meant they WERE on the right track, as more runners seemed to be heading their way. So they all turned and carried forward in the direction they had been heading, in reality, putting more and more distance between them and the trail that, they would later discover, at this particular point, they were only a few hundred meters away from. Only much later would they find out that this particular runner that they had all relied on as assurance to their correct track had ALSO never run this course before, nor any course for that matter. He was somewhere in his early 60s and very proud and happy to be running his very first race. So, this was most certainly the case of the blind leading the blind. When all was said and done, he thanked everyone for getting lost before him because if they hadn’t, he was clear he would never have made it back on his own and certainly not had the enjoyment of the company. So, that all gave them a little something to hold onto when reflecting on each of their total blunders on the course. Back to the moment where they all decided to carry forward on their wayward course, they all were made more confident by the fact that this road was one HUGE downhill. They had been promised downhill. So, they thought, this must be it. {Reflective note – so many life lessons Julie would gain while reflecting upon this blunder, how many times in the story are there moments of, well if this, then this must be it – and they were wrong. And in the race between assumptions/jumping to conclusions versus critical thinking – it’s critical thinking for the win! Thank you 5ks for all of your wonderful life lessons and friendly reminders about how not to be a bozo.}
So, with all sorts of false confidence now so intermingled with their continuous sense of uncertainty and doubt that the two were indistinguishable from each other, all seven of them cruised down the hill. This is where Julie’s downhill running skills that she learned at a running course about a decade earlier came into play. She sailed down the hill at a breakneck speed, passing all of them and loving every second of it, getting up to a 6:30 pace without feeling a single moment of effort or bead of sweat. She had already been having a great race since cresting the Hurricane Hill and was looking forward to sailing through the rest of the course. That is until her and the other 6 of the wayward runners hit the bottom of the hill where it tee’d at another road and there was DEFINITELY no sign telling them which way to go. That’s when they knew they were most definitely off track. That’s also when they all turned and looked back up the hill they had all just sailed down. Apparently, ONE Hurricane Hill was not enough for this crowd of brazen, free-spirits, unbound by the limits of trail markers and unsatisfied with one mere massive hill to scale. And this hill put the first Hurricane Hill to utter shame.
One among them decided to jog up that hill and the rest of them, after a moment for a chuckle and some scrambling to try and figure out where the heck they actually were which included asking a cop that was passing by that knew absolutely nothing about the race course, they all started the long walk back up the hill. Julie finally turned her Garmin off at this point, so it’s anybody’s guess exactly how much extra running she did, but it’s safe to assume, in total, she added an extra couple of miles onto the 5K course.
Despite the fact that what had been promising to be a great race was now no longer anywhere near competitive for Julie and her new band of lost boys and girls (which, incidentally did include two actual young girls among them, one who was with her mother and the other who we eventually realized needed to definitely call her mother who was probably worriedly waiting at the finish line) they all enjoyed the camaraderie and unexpected chance to chat and connect with this random collection of folks lost in the hills of Hartford, VT together.
Julie got into a lovely conversation with a gentleman covering all manner of issues of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the like (you can read about it in our People Along the Way section) and they chatted for 10 or 15 minutes all the way back to the trail, not only having a great conversation, but also finding out there were a number of coincidental things they had in common, including the fact that he knew Ryan’s college best friend who was currently patiently waiting for us in the parking lot with the van, having expected us to be there about 30 minutes after the race’s start time.
When the group got back to the trail and we found the missed marker they all understood how they missed it, how so many of them missed it and why all of those who missed it were newbies to the course. It WAS marked. And, as per his original disclaimer, they all absolved the race organizer of fault, taking responsibility for each of their blunders, more so because he so emphatically insisted they do so, but also because they all knew it was them that missed it. HOWEVER, where the trail marker was located was RIGHT at the inside of a turn with the trail marker significantly below eye level at a point where there was plenty of trail going straight at that point. So, if you didn’t know there was a turn coming up, there would be no reason to arbitrarily look down and to the right to find the marker that was very clearly there for anyone looking at that spot. So, yes, it was well-marked for anyone who knew to look for it or anyone who was constantly scanning for upcoming turns, or anyone who just happened to look that way at that moment, or anyone who was running amidst others who had already made the turn or knew the course. But anyone who was running with their eyes straight-ahead on the trail ahead of them simply would not see it. This was a case of a race organizer marking a trail that he knows so well that one could imagine it being hard to see the trail through the eyes of someone who didn’t. But, again, we know he made it clear, it was not his fault and all seven of the wayward runners took responsibility…but they also didn’t feel too bad about missing it.
At this point, this being the 11th 5K run in under two months, Julie was learning quite a lot about the art of course marking and how different race organizers do it and, at least in Julie’s evaluation, clearly representing the more daft of runners, she was starting to see the cream rise to the top. Now, if you are organizing your race and you have the audacity to expect to have attentive, smart, well-prepared runners on your course, sure you could use some of the tactics we had seen employed of arrows placed where turns need to be made and nothing more. If, however, you want to show off your stuff as a race organizer and cater to the bottom of the barrel, expecting to have flakes like Julie on your course, you could take a page from some of the more impressive books we’ve seen, like the crazy hot trail race in Waterville, Maine that was for a running club of people that ran a different course in this SAME SPOT every week, but STILL, the race organizer employed two brilliant race-marking tactics. One, his race markers not only included arrows, but included a very BIG sign that had the logo and name of the race, impossible to miss, even in peripheral vision and all of those signs raised up to be at eye level for anyone over 4 feet tall and then the brilliant move of spray painting a white line across the paths that would mean going OFF course. Brilliant. Plus, spray painted arrows on the ground in front of the runners indicating a turn. Then, if you are awash in volunteers, of course, you can bring in the infallible technique of actual human beings standing at the turns and keeping wayward sheep from getting away from the flock. These and many more great race marking techniques have assures that dimwitted runners like Julie can focus solely on pacing and plodding forward.
Before we come down too harshly upon the degree of Juile’s dimwittedness, when Julie crossed the finish line, even Ryan, who CLEARLY managed to make it through just fine as a newbie did remark that there was one marker that, even as he passed it, he thought, that one would be easy to miss. Let’s be clear. He didn’t miss it. But he at least had some compassion for whatever poor fools might. He didn’t realize he married one of those poor fools, but he did have that compassion as he passed it.
Once back on the trail, Julie and her conversation companion attempted to keep the conversation going, but Julie was filled with energy to run the heck out of the trail they had returned to and her companion acknowledged he wouldn’t be able to keep up and didn’t want to hold her back and released her to fly like the wind. And fly she did.
At that point, Julie felt like she had been injected with antelope essence and she just took off. It felt like she was barely moving, like the ground was just disappearing beneath her feet. When she looked down at her restarted Garmin watch, she expected to see a speed in the 7s because she felt like she was moving so fast. Despite how it felt, she was only moving at about an 8:15-8:30 as she navigated the twists and turns and tree roots of the wooded trail. No matter. She was loving every second of it. Eventually she looked down and saw the Garmin matching her feeling as she cruised through the final parts of the course at a breezy 7:40. As she got closer to the end, she began to see the other of her fellow lost boys – the one who had jogged back up the hill, in her sights…too far ahead to catch, but close enough that she was glad to see she had caught up.
Despite her fast movement once returned to the race course, there’s nothing that can salvage a race time for a 2 mile off course and she crossed the finish line somewhere north of an hour to a chuckling husband with an entertained smile on his face that said, “Really?! Again?!” We laughed as we crossed the finish line. Ryan had been there waiting with the wife of the gentleman Julie had been talking to while walking up her voluntary second Hurricane Hill and shared with the wife the coincidences she had discovered (their daughter lived in Rochester!) and assured her that her husband was safe and would be arriving shortly.
At that point, Ryan and Julie said a quick goodbye to their newfound friends and ran down the hill that the bus had originally shuttled us up, adding an extra .4 miles to the already excessive running of the day to meet up with Ryan’s friend Peter patiently and probably confusedly waiting for us at our van for a post-race visit. Kudos to him for sticking it out without a phone call since Julie’s phone was now long dead and Ryan’s was energized and sitting in the van.
As for Ryan’s race report, yea, it was great. The hill was tough, he power walked it and the rest of the race was great. Julie made it particularly easy for him to win this one and by a pretty large margin.
The Hurricane Hill had tried to conquer us both, but, rather, we emerged quite triumphant, finding ourselves invigorated and energized by the obstacles we had overcome, the cool breezes and twists and turns of the Hartford forest and just the joy of a fun morning filled with new friends, old friends and unexpected adventures.
R and J in the USA 
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