First Day of Summa' - Race - Mine Falls - 5

Day 172 - The first day of summa' started normally enough.

Woke up, went to work, watched World Cup soccer online, had lunch...

Then I got a message from Festus, my Good Times rival from last year. He was asking if he could crash at my place for a few days while he visited Lowell for the summer. His plan was to be in Lowell to visit friends, and to run the Good Times summer series. Keep your enemies closer, I say.

Sure. Not a problem.

Then he told me that he would be flying in that night and would be landing at Logan close to midnight. Festus' travel plan was to reenact Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and take the T from Boston to Lowell. The only problem is that the last T departs Boston at 11:20PM.

I told him unless he felt like running 26.2, with luggage, then he'll take my offer for me to pick him up at Logan when he lands.

Back to watching World Cup soccer I went, and finished my tough day at work.

I had to get in my run, so I decided to head up to Mine Falls in Nashua for the weekly trail race series, already in its third week. This great series is put on by GCS and managed by Mike W.

It was close to 6:30PM when I signed up and lined up for the 5K course. The other option was the 5 mile course, but a couple of factors forced me to do the 5K:

- Mt Washington race two days prior
- Intense 7+ mile tempo run the day before
- Good Times tomorrow
- GLRR board meeting in about an hour back in Lowell

I figure it would take me about 19 minutes to do the 5K, so that would give me plenty of time to head home, shower, and get to the board meeting by 7:30PM.

It was nice to see some of the same folks I saw at Mt Washington at this race. They, like myself, weren't feeling any ill effects from Mt. Washington. Jim H. was telling me that that's normal. There's not much pounding on the legs when you're climbing for that long, and it's a different set of muscles. I would have to agree.

About a mile into the 5K race, I was already behind a pack of about six runners and they were only pulling further and further away. I then noticed that only one other runner ahead of me was heading towards the 5M course. That's when I decided, what the heck, let's do the 5 miler!

This was the first time that I had run the 5 mile course here, and was planning on running it eventually, just not tonight. I was actually fearful of getting lost at certain points around the middle of the run, and not making it back within a reasonable amount of time! I managed to navigate safely through the first portion of the course, but then the course got really technical near the end. Just the the way I like my trail runs.

I ended up second in the 5 miler with a time of 32:24

I felt that it was probably one of my better trail races. It looks like tricking my running brain at the last second did the trick.

I quickly reported into the results desk, and took off for home and the board meeting. I called Glenn to let him know that I would be about 30 minutes late to the meeting, and to start without me.

The meeting was well on its way by the time I arrived a little before 8PM, still a little sweaty and stinky from the race, but so wasn't everyone else at the meeting. It was a hot one tonight and there's no AC in the office!

Finished with the meeting around 9PM, and got home with a few hours to spare before I headed into Logan to pick up my good friend Festus.

I didn't get to bed until around 1AM when we got back home from the airport.

Time to get some shut-eye before repeating most of it again in the morning.

Welcome to summa!

(Did anyone try the egg trick?)