Lonely Cows
The Gibbet Hill Relay Race
It was a last-minute thing.
It is a cross-country type race on a cow farm in Groton where I grew up.
But, not any random cow farm. I have many personal connections to this cow farm.
If you sit or stand on the back side of the Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts and look out towards the North East, on the other side of the athletic fields where I played frisbee and practiced golf strokes, on the other side of the hill where we ran repeats for cross country practice, on the other side of where our cross country course traversed a grassy slope to plunge down for a last lap of the fields and out on the golf course to turn around that ancient maple tree onto the final dirt road stretch up to the finish line at the 50 yard line of the football field, legs pistoning, hearts pounding, lungs bursting, yes there, on the other side of route 40 where we ran on cold December afternoons to condition ourselves for wrestling practice, there on that steep hill in the cow pasture, wrapped around the castle where adolescent hearts may have raced in romance on prep-school afternoons like something from a Fitzgerald short story, out there, as you stand or sit and gaze you’ll see a green and bucolic cow pasture with a ruin of stonework on the crest, but I, my friends, see much more.
This race in a cow pasture was a race in a familiar place.
I originally wanted to put in a team with my training buddies, but they weren’t available. Two of the ladies from my club needed a body to fill out their team – so I jumped in. It is a charity event and if I had more time I’m sure I could have adequately filled their coffers, but as it was, it ended up being a buy-in.
It is a 3-person relay race on a rough, hilly 1.2 mile loop course. Each relay member does the loop twice. You carry a baton-shaped vegetable. Some teams had eggplants, some rhubarb stalks, we had a large carrot. I suppose there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
The course is something unique, I’ll try to walk you through it. It starts behind the restaurant in an open lawn of soft grass, clipped short and squishy. With all the rain we’ve been having the grass has a deep emerald lushness. Like an expensive golf course where you sink in with each step. Not wet, but spongy. Not the best service for trying to move with speed.
The weather was good. Warm and sunny. This late June afternoon, one of the longest days of the year. Mid-to-high 70’s with no wind. A beautiful day. A beautiful afternoon. Too hot for a marathon but perfect for a 1.2-mile dash through a cow pasture.
From the stacked hay bale start line, you rise up across the soft lawn to a dirt road. All of this racecourse is, on other days, an active cow farm. They have a special herd of Angus there. I suppose I need to explain what an Angus is. It is a large black cow bred for meat. They are impressive creatures.
Those same said Angus are sequestered and partitioned to a side paddock for the race. They let usknow that they were not at all happy about this. They lowed protesting at us as we careened off the dirt road to cross the paddock proper.
There is no way to keep a cadence or pace in the paddock. With the soft ground the herd had peppered it with cow-foot shaped holes. Hundreds of them. 4-6 inches deep. All these holes in close proximity to each other like the grid of a maniacally hole punched piece of paper. You couldn’t avoid them.
Throw in some cow crap for good measure, some tall grass and some mud and it’s all you can do to not break an ankle or fall down. I’m an experienced trail runner but I could find no secret foot-placing ritual to maintain speed or cadence here. Just mincing along and swearing a bit. A real ankle tester.
Across a slippery bridge over a muddy patch which was actually a piece of plywood thrown over the gully. Out of the paddock up the side of a hill with a single-track cow path on it. I don’t know how animals so large can make a trail so skinny and treacherous. You could grab a few easy strides here and there but it’s still treacherous.
There were volunteers out there to direct you through the turns but it was a bit like an open country fell race in that you could choose to cut the corners or run off the trail, which many did, either by accident or through insanity.
Now, maybe ½ mile in, it turns a corner and slams you up a fairly significant lung-busting climb through a field speckled with cow pies and people walking who felt like cow pies in the full sun. If you managed to keep your head at the start you could take some places here. If you didn’t keep your head this was where the walking started.
Nearing the top of the couple hundred feet of climb you come back onto a semi-civilized dirt road and can start to relax a bit for a couple hundred feet of easy downhill before being routed hard left through the ruins of a tessellated country house, locally known as ‘the castle’.
This is a fun detour. But, it is not to last, as you slam hard right, down the other side of the steep hill you just conquered. It’s a bit of a free fall on uneven muddy ground. Surviving this you get a rolling trail section along the road, with some actual sucking mud pits that saw some competitors emerge carrying one of their muddy shoes in hand to the finish.
From the road you gather yourself back onto the lawn, trying in vain to look fit and athletic for the crowd and the relay transition point or finish, depending on your lot.
…
As familiar as I was with the territory, I did not know the course. I had a brief overview from some of my club-mates who had run it last year. But you know how that is. Especially, a course like this. Very hard to adequately describe its varied quirkiness.
The second lap was better as you had acclimated and warmed up a bit and knew the lay of the land.
But I get ahead of myself.
I was a couple weeks into my ‘say yes to everything’ campaign of anti-training when I heard of this race. Thomas from our club who sometimes runs our long runs with us on Sundays described it to me.
Thomas is a another running club success story. He started running with us a few years back when he was just starting high school. His mom would drop him at club events and back then a couple of us old timers could almost make a good show of pushing the runs with him.
Not now.
Going into his senior year he’s in the low 4’s for the mile and you can tell it’s painful for him to run those 9-minute miles with us. Anyhow, Thomas put together a high school team for the race last year and they smoked it. On this difficult, uneven terrain they averaged around 5minute miles to take the prize.
He was running with a less stacked team this year and lamented that their times would be slower.
My team was Kerri and Christine. A couple of long-time club runners, up to the task.
I got there a full ten minutes before the race start, which in Chris-time is like a century early. Still, they were worried and were preparing to replace me when I got there. Kerri wanted to take the first leg. Christine wanted the middle leg so I got the anchor, which was fine with me.
There was nothing about this race that required preparation and/or worry. The last time I ran a distance this short was probably in prep school myself, just across rte. 40 on the cross-country course. That would have been 40 years ago.
My strategy was to show up and run. My A-goal was to not die in the process and to have fun. I honestly don’t know what kind of warm up would be appropriate for a man of my, umm…, vintage for a 1.2 cow pasture run. So, I didn’t bother.
Our team number was 69, and I swear I had nothing to do with that. Christine picked up the bibs. They were color coded red, white and blue for the three legs. I did pin mine on upside down just to favor my inner 13 year old with a bit of irony.
There were probably 300 people all told, so 100 in each leg.
It was hard. Taking the carrot, I was red lined from the start and not moving all that fast. Dancing through the cow paddock was more work and less speed. I messed up starting my watch and had to hit it ¼ mile in. I hiked a bit of the uphill. I wasn’t giving it 100%. I was just trying to do it justice and not die.
When I finally got some cadence going on the back side of the hill, I was thinking to myself “I hope I don’t get lapped by Thomas”. He was running the first leg and their team was minutes ahead of the next nearest. Sure enough, before I got off the hill, I heard hoof beats behind me, and Thomas went blowing by.
I handed off the carrot and took a breather. My midpacker team mates would give me a good 20-25 minutes before I would have to run the anchor lap.
Second time around was much better. Now that I knew the course I could run more tactically and use my experience. I passed a lot of people. Once I got to the down hill I was able to let my foot of the brake and fly a bit. I pushed hard through the finish and was bent over breathing hard.
Even with a decent effort my watch said I was running 9 minute miles. Meh. It was fun. I saw a lot of people I knew. It was a good charity crowd. People were there to have fun. It wasn’t the preachy charity crowd.
We got one free Narragansett beer, which is way better than the Michelob Ultra they try to give you at some of these. Rumor was that there was barbeque, but I had to skedaddle. I hade a call to get on.
I’m going to call this race a success. Although it made my knee injury mad with all the uneven ground, I had fun and it was good to be a part of something familiar in a familiar place. I’ll do it again next year and make sure I have enough time to do some decent fund raising.
It would be even better if they let the cows run free – like Pampalona. That would be cool.