Castlewood Cup Race on 2/28/09

Saturday morning was the inaugural Castlewood Cup race sponsored by Big River Running in a local park in the suburb of Ballwin. It is one of the locations where the Big River runners meet twice a month for their long runs. Since late December I have made it a point to show up each Sunday when I haven't been competing to get in a long run on a consistent basis. The course itself was almost exclusively on trails through the park which also are used for mountain biking. I don't normally use the specific trails of the race course during my training runs since they are pretty hilly and I am usually trying to keep my effort and pace fairly consistent on the flat ground which is actually not that hard since this is a very large park with probably a couple thousand acres I would guess.

The race course was quite hilly in parts especially near the beginning when we started up a massive hill after running around the edge of the parking area for the first 1200 meters or so. I came out two weeks prior to the race and previewed the course, and thus knew the hills would be brutal to try and race. During the preview I actually walked up part of the first hill since there was a backlog of runners on a small trail but also because my poor legs needed a little break. I anticipated having to walk parts of the course during the race on the first hill but the runners ahead of me never bunched up and I held back enough not to need to walk on that first hill. I ended up seeing quite a few runners I knew and that I expected would finish near me in the final standings. There were quite a few announcements at the start of the race but I was far enough back in the field so that I couldn't hear about 95% of what was said. Good times. I ran fairly evenly coming through the five mile mark in about 47:30 with the majority of the hills coming in the first 6 miles of the course. Just after the five mile split/water station there was a major hill and quite a few people walked up it. I ran/jogged slowly up it slowly but surely and passed a few people.

Did I mention the weather? Yeah, it was cold, very cold. About 21-23 degrees during the race and I was wearing two bottom layers and three top layers plus hat and gloves. Trail racing is not really a specialty of mine so I was just happy not to twist an ankle and finish the race. It was billed as a 10.1 mile course but part of the instructions I missed probably included the fact that due to recent rain/weather they cut the course short to about 9.2 miles. I came out of the woods (around mile 8) and shortly thereafter we had to cross a creek and everyone's shoes became soaked with very wet water. We finished about 1 mile later but running in wet shoes in 20 degree weather is not a normal training occurrence. I tried to hold my pace the last mile or so but it was something of a struggle. Overall a good effort and I was surprised to finish in 129:19. I expected to finish around 140:00 but the short version of the course certainly helped my final time. I only walked/stopped long enough to drink half a cup of water at the five mile mark/waterstop.

I am a huge fan of the Big River Running races/guys so I will certainly be back next year assuming they come back to Castlewood for this race in 2010. Overall I finished in 115th place out of 297 total runners so I was in the top half of overall finishers.

The following day on Sunday I went back out to Castlewood to meet up with the Big River Running group for their weekly long run and just a handful of people showed up. I dropped off the pace of the fast guys almost immediately and ran alone for about an hour including on some of the hills. My legs were still quite sore and I stopped after the first five miles rather than the two hour run I had hoped to complete. As I type this on Monday my legs are still sore.