Race Report for Mt. Toby Trail Race

I’m entering the meat of my race season now, and so far I’ve stuck to my marathon training plan without deviation. OK, so a few times I’ve added some distance and run more than I was supposed to, but never by more than a mile or so. I’m also starting to run longer and longer races now. Back on July 5th, I made mention of what I knew my challenge would be - to race or not to race. As my training plan started calling for longer and longer weekend runs, I started incorporating longer races into my weekend schedule. However, I need to keep my eyes on the prize and not let anything I do on the shorter races interfere with my 2009 goal of doing well in the Cape Cod Marathon.

Even as I was formulating my training plan and race schedule I questioned my ability to exercise the self-discipline needed to treat these longer races as just another LSD (Long Slow Distance) training run. I knew that once I got out there I would feel the need to run faster and not just let everyone pass me. I suspected that I would not be content to run at a training pace in a race.

These were the thoughts still racing through my mind while I was standing with 140-ish other people in the early morning humidity at the base of Mt. Toby on Sunday. Here it was almost 2 months later, and 5 minutes before race time, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do. Now that it’s over, let’s just say that I both succeeded and failed. My take home lesson from this race was how much Sports Psychology plays a roll in performance.

Let me explain - like every other runner out there, I’ve been battling to improve my running and turn in a new PR. For a while I was chipping away at my times in small increments. Then I ran the Mud Hog. The Mud Hog was a tipping point for me because having a partner in a race forced me to dig deeper than I had previously. And as a result, I ran 6 minute and change miles, something I’d never come even close to previously. With a new found confidence, I did my next 5K and shaved a full minute and 40 seconds off of my PR, running my first sub-7 minute average.

These improvements in performance had very little to do with training, nothing at all to do with equipment, and everything in the world to do with mindset. So, if you can perform well when you’re in the proper mindset, what happens when you race in the wrong mindset? Mt. Toby, that’s what.

So what went wrong?
First, I showed up on race day not sure if I was running to race. Second, I felt out-classed by the caliber of runners that I saw there. There were quite obviously many experienced trail runners at this race, many people who had run the race in previous years, and a handful of ultra-marathoners to boot. I heard people talking about this crazy race and that 50-miler that they had just done, and about how this race was just a little local thing they were doing as if only to kill some boredom. This little local race that they were talking about was for me my longest run so far this season and longest trail race ever. I was daunted and these guys were yawning.

But enough about the crap going on in my head. Let’s talk about the race. The Mt. Toby Trail Race is put on by the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club and this was the 14th year of the race. The race was well organized and there appeared to be no shortage of volunteers. Between the registration folks, t-shirt peeps, aid station workers, volunteer firefighters with ATVs and spine boards, trail markers, timers, cookout grill masters, and photography people you could tell that this group has its act together. They put together a very nice race. Even the shirts were cool - a nice black tech moisture-wicking shirt with the summit climb represented by a single line sloping up to the summit fire tower.

The race course is 14 miles in distance. Runners start in the town park, run along a paved section for less than a 1/2 mile, before entering the trailhead and running more or less 7 miles uphill to the summit before turning around and running mostly downhill to the finish. We’ve had 3 straight days of heavy rain, so some parts of the trail were quite wet with standing water and mud. The most treacherous part though, was the descent when negotiating the exposed rock sections that were very slick.

Mt. Toby Trail Race Course Map

Total elevation for this run is 1900 feet of climbing. The last 1 - 1 1/2 miles before the summit was a steep 9% grade that chewed up my quads in both directions.

Mt. Toby Trail Race Elevation Profile

I went out mid-pack and finished mid-pack (72nd out of 138 finishers). I finished in 2:14:55 for a 9:38 pace. I’m still ambivalent about the results. I’m used to finishing higher up in the overall field standings, so I’m a little disappointed. At the same time though, this was my longest run of the year, and my first attempt at this distance in trail running, so I guess I should quite whining and just be happy with it.

Either way, this is a great race and I look forward to doing this one again next year.  Here’s some pictures from the race - photo credits to www.locallyrun.com.  Click photos to enlarge.

Me @ mile 13 1/2

Finish Line @ Mt. Toby Trail Race 2009

Hot? Humid? My shorts look like I just climbed out of the pool.