Northfield Snowshoe Race

Saturday started out at fellow CMS Teammate Greg Hammet's house. From there we were off (Josh Ferenc driving). We arrived a little after 8am with plenty of time to pick up our numbers and get a few warmup miles in on the road. Everyone toed the line and RD Dave Dunham started the race right on time. Ben Nephew got first billet onto the single track trail follwed by Josh and then myself. It was pretty tight for a few hundred yards until we crossed a groomed ski trail and Josh took the opportunity to take Ben. I followed suit and went with him, but he kepted surging. I thought that he was going to let up once he created some space so I let him go. This was a huge mistake becasuse I soon realized he wasn't surging up the hill, he just simply increased the pace. I couldn't answer and ended up running solo most of the run until the descent. This is where Leigh Schmmitt seemed to gain a lot of ground and completely surprised me. He seemed to come out of nowhere. I was not a happy camper becasuse I had settled into a comfortable pace that I now had to leave behind to hold him off. Fortunately I had enough steam and came in second place, a minute behind Josh. I knew that DD was happy with his 4th place finish becasue he seemed to be glowing as he crossed the finish line. Good Job! Afterwards a group of us cooled down on the course and picked up all of the flags and talked about how much fun it was to be out there and how nice the course was. On the ride home Josh, Greg, and I indulged in about 1100 calories a piece at McDonald's (kind of gross but fun). We must be the skinniest fat kids in town. I was still feeling pretty fresh (considering what was in my belly) when I got home and couldn't resist doing a double. But however, I needed to shovel the roof first (and I did). Then I set out for an easy (6:43 pace) 8.6 mile run to finish the day with 18.6 miles in the bank. Sunday I got together with Erik Kress and Mark Miller for a long run. They are just ramping into a marathon training cycle and were doing 16 that they let me join in on. I needed 21 for the day so I went into Keene earlier and did 5 miles out towards the Goose Pond Trails then headed to Erik's house (and Mark's basement) for the run. It was nice to run in Keene where the terrain is more level than Putney. About 10 miles in Mark shared some of his Powerbar Gummi/Chew with caffiene. They were great and gave us all a little rush. We actually bumped up the pace a bit without even noticing (at first). During the run we celebrated my first 100 mile week. It felt good but our celebration was premature becasue I thought I hit 100, 15 miles in when in actuality it wasn't until the end of the run. During our stretch we got to talking about things and I mentioned Andy Mcarron being in town now and Erik is "100%" positive they are neighbors. That would be cool. I will have to look into contacting him. All in all it was a good week for me, totaling 100.22 miles. I wish it didn't turn back to zero Monday morning!