Eastern States 100 Weekend Running

For the second straight year, we are camping and hanging out at the Eastern States 100 in Waterville, PA.  I have a bunch of friends running it.  I don’t think it is a race I’d ever do.

I wanted to get a short Friday night run in.  Since the campground is on the course, that worked out great.  There are even streamers next to our camper.  This is about ¾ of a mile into the race.

It was pretty cool out.  I went with a short sleeve shirt.  It was cool by the end of the run.  I could’ve went shirtless I guess.  

I followed the course along the Mid State Trail.  I knew the first nasty climb would be around mile 2.  I decided that I would at least run part of it.  It was already 6:30 PM when I started, so I couldn’t go too far.

I thought this would be a nice and relatively flat run until the climb.  I was sure wrong about that.  I got new La Sportiva Bushido shoes and decided to try them out.  With the conditions, I’m not sure how to judge them yet.

A couple women asked me my race number.  I told them I wasn’t racing.  I headed up off from the campground.  It was a short uphill before the trail flattened out.

It wasn’t long before I hit crap.  The good thing was the trail didn’t climb all the way to the top.  The bad part was that it ran on a sloped ridge along the side of the mountain.  The top of the mountain was to my left and down to my right was Little Pine Creek.  The trail was very narrow and somewhat sloped.  To make matters worse, it went up and down around trees and it had a bunch of very loose rocks too.

I was really frustrated with this part.  Since it was relatively flat, it was runnable.  However, it was annoying.  So much for having nice ridge running.  This ledge was a bitch.

I’ve been on sections like this before.  However, never for such a long period of time.  It went on for over 2 miles.  I had even thought about just turning around at some points.  I pushed forward though, because I really wanted to climb.

My watch was showing distance and elevation and time.  I’m not sure if it ever got a signal though.  It wasn’t working in the beginning.  I don’t know why or how it was getting any distance readings, but at least it was showing something.

There was one up and down, but most of the run was along the ledge.  The unevenness continued to play with me and I cursed a lot.  Right before the road crossing and the climb, there was a nice footbridge.  It went over a neat little pool on another creek.

I crossed the road and began the long climb.  I did this part during a training run here in the winter.  It was brutal then, but it was snow covered.  The first ¼ or so was flat loose rocks.  It basically was more of a dry creek bed than a trail.  This first part of the climb was about 400 feet of elevation gain in ¼ of a mile.  It was steep.  There aren’t many sections of trail steep enough to bother my back any more, but this did just that.

It flattened out for a bit and then climbed some more.  I kept going up and up.  When I got to 750 total feet of elevation gain on my watch, I decided to head back down.  That wasn’t much better though.  With its steepness and rockiness, it was mostly not runnable.

I slowly hiked my way down.  Even that was a challenge.  My feet were pressed against the front of my shoes.  It was great to get to the bottom and back on the road.  It had been getting pretty dark deep in the hollows too.

I crossed the road and got back on the ledge.  I wasn’t sure why, but this section now seemed runnable and fun.  Maybe it was because I was going the other direction, but the slope didn’t bother me much.  It was less rocky on this end too.  I’m also sure I was happy to almost be done.

It was great to get to mile 5.  I saw another runner headed out as I was coming back.  I guess he is crewing.  I don’t think either of us actually expected to see another runner out on these remote trails.

The last mile was definitely the worst with the rocks and just the ledge in general.  I hiked a lot more of it.  I couldn’t wait to be done.  I finished up well over 6 miles.  It was nice to start and finish at the camper.

I’m going to video a lot of the race tomorrow and follow along.  I also want to get a run in.  I’d like to do 10-12 miles.  Hopefully, I can do that during the afternoon.  Now that I saw how crappy going the race’s direction is, I’m sure I’ll head the other direction tomorrow.  I’d like to say it can’t be any worse, but I’m sure it can be worse.

6.45 miles - 1:30:30 (14:02 pace)