Masters Weekend Club XC Races and Runs

some of my favorite club xc memories: winning the 40+ team battle with my compex team mates...sharing beer with the great atlanta tc...slam dancing with tony young at the post party...kicking tony young's butt on the bull...witnessing socalcush cast threats at john tuttle in woods...watching socalcush pass out before dark and then resurrect later in the evening for "round two"...lots of fun on and off the course in charlotte!!

strapiton wrote:

49 and hands it to the rest of the field including the 40 year old "youngsters". Pete is shaping up to be the best all-around American Masters guy ever.

DITTO!

Club XC Nationals sounds like it was a ton of fun with some outstanding racing! Congrats to all! Hopefully Pete and Muddy will chime in as well. I like reading all the different "race reports" and living vicariously through all you distance studs and studettes.

I hope to see everyone in Seattle for Club Nationals next year! We're going to put on a great event :)

Just got back from Charlotte. Plane delay kept me in the host city for a few hours more than planned.

What a great time! If you were one of the people there, thanks for helping make the weekend so much fun! If you weren't there, you really need to put this meet on the calendar for next year ... except for Cush, who's made it perfectly clear that he's had enough XC for this lifetime.

FYI, here's a link to some clips from the Masters Men's race. From this page you can navigate to clips from the day's other races:

http://tinyurl.com/2e8tyx5

Am pretty tired and have to hit the sack. So will just say that it was such a great feeling to win the team title with this group of guys. We took pretty much the same squad as last year, when the Atlanta Track Club dismantled us by 25 or 1000 points or something. Danny Martinez couldn't make it this time, but we filled his slot with Cush. And to a man, we ran better than last year ... in some cases a LOT better. And it paid off, with a terrific team effort that fueled us long into the night ... well, okay, it was part of our fuel.

Personally, it was my best race in a long time. Sitting out a couple months last spring for a knee injury has made for a long, tough road back to fitness. But persistence, coupled with the support of clubmates and fellow runners, seems to have paid off.

But I can't talk about this race without making it perfectly clear that Cushing-murray was the fitter runner. When Cush and I first made our small break (you can see us pulling away in the video at the above link), it was Cush who did all the work. I just sat on his shoulder. At one point, right around 4.5 miles I think, I even said, "I've got to slow down." And you know what? Cush backed off just a touch, refusing to leave me out in No Man's Land, prey for the trailing pack. When we finally reached the base of the hill on our third time up it - and only about a half mile out from the finish - I decided it was my turn to pony up some work, so I surged ahead of Cush, hoping to pull him up the hill and give him a little bit of a rest. Well, when I got to the top of the hill, I looked over my shoulder, expecting Cush to be right there, and discovered that I'd gapped him by about 20 meters. At that point, I wasn't sure if he had hit a mini-wall or just didn't want to run up the hill hard (we HAD been having a lot of fun cruising the final 3K loop). But I figured I couldn't chance letting other runners catch up in order to wait for him. So I poured it on over the last 400 and got the win. But let's be clear: Cush did most of the work for us over the last 4-5K. If we hadn't won the team title, I'd have felt like kind of a jerk. As it was, we grabbed 1-2 to spearhead the win.

Of course, Cush refused to give me even a little bit of a hard time about it. One stand-up guy.

Okay, time for the holidays.

Oh, and time for me to go to bed.

Finally started "running" again this past week. To take the stress off my back and keep the pounding to a minimum, I have been running on the treadmill at a 12% incline. (Roughly the avg for the Mt Washington race. Don't know yet if I will enter the lottery to try and run it.)

Amazing how hard 11 minute miles can be!!

MF, vizsla's are really pretty dogs. I am told they are very loyal as well.

Muddy, congrats !

What a great event Club XC is! Just an exciting energy all weekend. Was tough not to have my ATC team defend our title, but what a tough tough team effort by the compex squad. My hats are off to you guys, you came prepared to kick some but and it was impressive.

Great write ups Pete and Christian, I second your opinion of the course. Pete, hats off to ya brother, I underestimated you and I will never do that again. ha.

Great to be our age(s) and have such a great and competitive venue to participate in.

Back at work today after a looooong flying day yesterday from the Charlotte area. I am sure everyone has stories to tell.

Conditions were perfect for racing this Saturday. The best since I have been doing these. & the flat course suited me just fine.

A fun day with all of our Club members running strong. I enjoyed being close enough to the front pack to actually watch that play out ~ pretty cool.

55 mile week

Tues - 1000, 800, 600, 400, 200 quicker and quicker 6 strides

Sat - XC 10k - 10th 33:?? I'll take it.

Cheers and next year Seattle's course and party will not dissappoint

tOnY

tOnY-

I watched most of the several hundred Masters finish on the video, and guess who was the ONLY one to smile...

Hey, it's supposed to H-U-R-T man!

What you were thinking (?):

-"Wow top ten on a decent (fast course) at the top of age group that doesn't suck for a change"

- "First orange singlet!"

- "I'm a miler, no need to puke out the finish"

- "Sea-Chickens are tied for 1st in NFC West"

- "Watch out Dempsey!"

- "BEER!!!!"

Congrats to the winners! That was a humbling experience. I ran 36 mid, well off my time on a hilly road course last week. All those miles and to get just crushed by so many guys! In xc with that many runners, you have to get out quick and I got way back in the start and there is not much you can do on that course for the first mile or more if that happens. So, maybe I ran sub 34 on a hilly road course after I turned 40 last year and maybe I ran the marathon recently and have been sick the past three weeks and maybe the course didn't suit my downhill strength and maybe my feet were burning from blisters (bad socks/spikes/rocks), the possible excuses are always boundless, but that was a real wakeup call. Of course, I knew where I stood, but to see all those guys that far ahead and then to watch close up while so many open guys were breezing through sub 30s and 31s on that course made me think that maybe some people are just so much more talented (and that includes youth) that on the same training they are three or four or five or six or more minutes faster. But that's no way to think and so I'm going to just work harder and smarter in the next year, primarily to make sure that I can limit my really slow recovery runs, really hammer my tempos, get in more quality long runs and long tempos, get in some hill sprints, even though it is very flat here, and get in an extra, lighter speed workout, as well as more strides each week. I just don't think that anything physiological has changed dramatically over the past year and eight months, and I am over the calf injuries that were costing me speed from 9/9 to 9/10.

Wow Jonesy... I wish I'd have know you were going to be there. It would have been cool to have finally met you. This was my last Club Cross race in the Open and I had a great time and it was good to seem many of you again. Indoor track here I come.

Yeah, I was hangin' in Charlotte with some of my fellow sixty-year-olds and we figured we could be the fathers of some of the forty-year-olds. Ha!

Muddy girl had a crappy race --- definitely her worst of the year and quite possibly one of her worst ever. "Fast and flat" are my least favorite words to describe a course. It did run exactly like a road race and the little hill did very little to change things. I hated the racing part.

My team, however, had a great day with the women's 40s and the men's 50s winning handily. The men's 40s got 5th and the women's 40 B team (basically 2 50s who couldn't find a 3rd and 2 47 year olds) took 4th. We had a men's 60s team, too.

The rest of the weekend was fun and memorable, even if most of us experienced exhausting travel delays on the way back. The party and dancing was fun and I spent a lot of quality time with my teammates and laughing until my stomach hurt. Truly I am blessed to have such a great and fun team.

Pete and CCM was entertaining as usual, although I do think I heard the "I can't believe I/he/we won" about a million times over the course of the next 24 hours. ;-) JK, you know I love you guys.

We're hosting next year and looking forward to another great time (but I may have "accidentally" turn on the sprinkler system on the course so that it is at least muddy and slightly slow so I can keep up!)

The folks in Charlotte did a great job and seemed genuinely excited to have us there -- and the weather was really nice.

muddy girl wrote:

"Fast and flat" are my least favorite words to describe a course.

The rest of the weekend was fun and memorable...

aahhh, "fast and flat": just the way i like my courses, but not my women (ok, i'll take one out of two). and the rest of the weekend was fun, although not too memorable--of course, that might have something to do with the 12-pack i drank before we left the course.

my favorite moment was waking up, panicked, in the hotel room alone, thinking the night had passed me by before realizing it was only around 7, with plenty of time to hit whiskey river. it could have been worse than sleeping through christmas...

by the way, muddy: i can't believe we won.

I can't believe SoCal Cush drank that 12-pack (he did, you know) right after a 10K XC race ... then was back on the dance floor a mere few hours later! And in prime drinking and dancing condition!

I can't believe people keep saying this was exactly like a 10K road race when, in fact, a lot of us could run at least a minute/couple minutes faster in an actual 10K road race!

I can't believe I left my Asics Piranhas, my old orange Fluffy Bunny sweat top, and more than a dozen full beers at the race course!

I can't believe we escaped Charlotte without having to bail at least one teammate out of jail!

But I have no trouble believing our club won. My clubmates worked their butts off for this race - that's what happens when you get stomped the previous year. My advice to other clubs is to watch out for the ATC next year. If they're anything like us, they'll be lethal in 2011.

Believe it.

socalcush wrote:

muddy girl wrote:

"Fast and flat" are my least favorite words to describe a course.

The rest of the weekend was fun and memorable...

aahhh, "fast and flat": just the way i like my courses, but not my women (ok, i'll take one out of two). and the rest of the weekend was fun, although not too memorable--of course, that might have something to do with the 12-pack i drank before we left the course.

my favorite moment was waking up, panicked, in the hotel room alone, thinking the night had passed me by before realizing it was only around 7, with plenty of time to hit whiskey river. it could have been worse than sleeping through christmas...

by the way, muddy: i can't believe we won.

lol. I can't believe you managed to find the party after they left you in the hotel. ;-) You did rebound pretty well, though.

It's a darn good thing you had a driver/babysitter to take you back from the course, too. ;-) You'd better get your butt up to Seattle next fall - even if you are "done" with this xc #$@* . It wouldn't be the same without you. ;-)

I also am surprised you didn't ride the bull like ynoT.

It was VERY irresponsible to leave all that beer at the race! Great to see all that work paying off for you and your team.

it was great to finally get to meet you, muddy girl, and an incredible experience watching you fellas fly!

i took it easy on the beers because i had a full day's worth of work to do on sunday, still, there was lots of fun to be had on the dance floor with nyloco and the other GVH folks. i intended to be home midafternoon to get the bulk of my work done, but instead spent an extra eight hours in PHL. *sigh.* at least some of that time -- both in the air and on the ground -- was spent in the always-enjoyable company of lori kingsley, who had a great race.

as for leaving stuff behind, my medal somehow evaporated between the whiskey river and the hotel room. oh well -- tokens are nice, but good times and the memories they create are worth much more.

i sure hope to make it to seattle next december, but in the meantime GVH will be hosting the 5K masters xc race in october in rochester, and this one will be a "real" xc course with actual grass, hills (plural), and a single-track up/down wooded section that i hope they'll be able to retain. you and i will find it pretty sweet, MG, and you won't socalcush ;-) which, of course, is no excuse for not coming out and tearing it up like a champ.