Wapack 2016

Piano wires.

I love the Wapack Trail race.  It is everything I dig in a race.  Trees, mountains, rocks, roots, dirt and blood.  Nothing pretentious about this race.  Good, honest, every day trail runners show up and run it.  It’s hard enough to scare off the uninitiated but not so hard as to kill you.

I asked Steve Pero, who was there,  to write me a description of the course and he responded:

“Gnarly single track trail with long climbs and descents. Constant battle with roots and rocks…this trail is one of the more technical in the US.”

Or taken from the website:

“The Wapack race course is 18.0 miles. The route is an out-and-back that follows the Wapack Trail between New Ipswich, NH and Ashburnham, MA.  There are four major mountains in between: Barrett, New Ipswich, Pratt, and Watatic, from north to south.  Total climb and total descent are each at least 3,000 feet over the 18 miles.”

In all fairness my watch clocked it at a total elevation gain of around 4,000 feet.  With the descent being about the same.  That’s still pretty good.  A mile is 5820 feet.  But that’s one of the big draws for me is all the technical climbing and descending.  It’s a hard course.

I remember one time someone posted a picture of their ‘trail’ on facebook and I scoffed. “That’s not a trail, that’s a dirt road!”  I know It’s hard to imagine what ‘technical’ means until you see it for yourself.  So…close your eyes and picture this…

You’re running down a rough, rutted, grass-clogged fire road and the trail disappears into the trees ahead.  As you start to climb the footing becomes irregular.  There is loose dirt.  There are exposed tree roots rising like wicked stairs or snares 6-12 inches up out of the ground from erosion.

There are big chunks of rocks. Some the size of a loaf of bread, some the size of small cars jutting half exposed out from the slope.  The trees lean in at all crazy angles.  You could reach out and touch the slope in front of you and sometimes you do to get more leverage.

The leaders run up these slopes.  They bounce from foothold to foothold and high-step up the trails.  Those of us in the mid-pack resort to hiking.  The runners in the back of the pack rest a lot.

There’s a method to the madness.  Unless you’re elite there’s no sense wasting energy trying to run up the technical slopes.  You lean forward, get low and swing your arms for momentum.

When you get to the top of the mountain the trees recede to an open expanse of brush and bedrock.  These are dotted with cairns and sweeping vistas of the surrounding mountains and forests.

Then you’re back into the woods and you have to run down a perilous slope, just like the one you ran up.  Roots, rocks trees.  Running down is more punishing to quads than running up. For a mid-packer the slopes are too steep to let yourself go.  If you catch a toe and fall it’s going to hurt with nothing but rough rock gardens to slow you down.

By the time you get to the last couple climbs and descents your legs are mush and you’re fighting to maintain some semblance of control and not kill yourself.  You will fall down.  Everyone does.  As soon as you get tired or start pushing faster than your feet can choose spots you catch a toe and go down.

Usually it’s just a scrape or a dirty shoulder. Sometimes it’s a broken bone or a trail of blood. But that’s the fun of a technical trail.  It challenges you.  It forces you to be present in the run.  It forces you to stay in control and within your abilities.

Because if you do get hurt you still have to get out of the woods.  There are no screaming crowds lining the course. There are no friendly water stops every mile.  There is only you and the mountain and whatever assistance you can draw from fellow runners.

15 years ago when I first ran the Wapack I would actually run the majority of the course.  I can’t do that anymore!  I power hike up the mountains, pick my way down the mountains and try to race the flats.  The advantage I have is that I know this course very well.  I know how to trail run. I know what to expect with technical trails and mountains.

And I love it!

My goal going into this one was to see if I could get in under 4 hours and not hurt myself.  You can expect to run your current marathon time over the 18 miles at Wapack. It’s true.  When I was in 3:15 marathon shape I’d run a 3:20 at Wapack.

This year was a mixed bag. I ran a clock time of 4:11 but that included getting lost at the end, adding ½ mile and having to stop and work out a cramp very late in the race.  If you take those two events out I was probably right on 4 hours.

I felt fine and my heart rate was wonderful the whole time.  The only time I got it up into zone 4 was power hiking up the back side of Watatic.  Other than that my engine was basically idling the whole time.  The course is so technical you can’t really race all out.

I didn’t have quite enough fitness and suffered a bit in the last 5 ½ miles.  Coming up the back side of Pratt, which is the steepest climb on the way back, it was a struggle to keep moving forward.

Then I had those piano wire cramps.  I have never had a problem with cramps.  This must be another of the indignities of being an increasingly senior runner.  They call these piano wire cramps because they run up that muscle on the inside of your quad.  It was brutal. I had to sit down with a ¼ mile to go and wait for it to stop spasming.

Now I know what people mean when they talk about those debilitating cramps at the end of a race.  I was eating Endurolytes but maybe I was sweating more than I thought.  Or I just wasn’t fit enough to run over 4 mountains – twice.

But I lived! The race was a success on a nice dry, sunny day. We ended up with around 97 runners.  Everybody had fun.  The last time I ran the whole race was 2007 when I was training for the VT 50 and I think I ran a 3:20.  But I was in good shape that year.

I decided to wear my road Hoka Cliftons, because those are the only shoes I own that I trust right now. They were super comfy but the big, sticky outsoles kept catching on the rocks and I took a lot of stumbles.  I took my most interesting fall coming back right before the climb up Pratt.

I was coming up the trail, running alone. I had just pushed the Watatic climb and descent pretty hard, because I knew the only good section of running was between Watatic and Pratt.  It’s a shallow downhill fire road the meanders past the aid station for at least ¾ of a mile.  I stretched it out a bit and used the momentum.

When I started over the ridge to the Pratt climb I could feel that piano wire starting to act up, which was a bit worrisome with 5+ miles and 3 mountains to go.  There was a family of hikers coming down the trail towards me. When I looked up to eyeball them I caught a toe and face planted.

When I got up I was cramping.  I had ripped a couple nice holes in two fingers of my left hand.  This poor family was horrified. I’m dancing around on one foot wincing and bleeding all over the place.  “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, it’s not a trail race unless you bleed a little!”

The holes in my fingers were a pain because every time I grabbed a tree or did anything with my hand they’d start bleeding.  I had no place to wipe the blood except my bib number or my shorts which were wet with sweat and covered in dirt.  (I was running shirtless with my water pack).  I carry my bottle in my left hand and it got all slippery with blood.

I wasn’t hurt at all it was just a bad place to get a puncture wound. Like the same place they stick you to get a blood test.

You’d have to be in great shape to race this course all out.

I just wanted to not die.  I accomplished my mission.  I certainly wasn’t as well trained as I should have been and I suffered for it.  Especially the down hills.  My quads were sore for a full 4 days after.

It was a blast and I’m glad I was in a position to run the Wapack this year.