March 2021 Monthly Running Challenge

I bought them a while back on sale, and am really liking the rose-gold colored shiny logo & accents.

My husband and I ran the last race in our private Winter Series on Tuesday. The 8k at Stanky Creek, aka Big Stanky (as opposed to the 5k which we decided to call Little Stanky.)

Big Stanky is a lot of race for such a short distance - it’s mostly mountain bike trails, and is the closest thing to a “technical” trail race that we get around here, where trails are mostly flat and well-groomed. It starts on the road in front of the park, then cuts into the woods, up and down a series of packed dirt bike ramps, up and up and up a winding series of steps created by tree roots, down several gullies and across creeks, and finally a steep plunge and jump across Stanky Creek itself, then one last scramble across a gravel trail to finish at the parking lot.

We set out to duplicate the conditions of the official Winter Off-road series race which had been held the previous Sunday. Reports from the race said the course was nice and dry and in good condition (rare at this time of year! Stanky is usually a mudfest!) and the weather was perfect, mid 60s, sunny, light breeze. Our conditions Tuesday were almost identical. Couldn’t have had a nicer day! My legs were still feeling the effects of racing the 10k at Shelby Farms five days earlier, but we wanted to get the 8k in before the weather changed.

I took a look at the results for the ladies in my age group before we started. There’s one lady in particular who I regard as my doppelgänger - in previous years, I have been slightly faster over shorter distances and she is faster over longer distances. So far this year that’s been holding true - my time at the 3k was faster by a single second, and I came in right after her in the 5k and 10k. Her time in the 8k was 54:44, which works out to an 11:01 mile pace. So, aiming for 11 minute miles. All right! My time in the 5k, Little Stanky, worked out to a 10:27 pace, so I knew I could run that fast at Stanky Creek over similar terrain, now I just had to keep it up over 2 more miles!

The first mile of Big Stanky is the least technical, including the stretch on the road and a more or less even run down to the bike obstacles, so I planned to run hard there and bank some time for the more technical sections later. The third mile is probably the hardest, the fourth is a little easier except by then you’re tired, and the fifth has a couple of nice sections which are even enough to sprint - if you have any gas left in your tank by then.

So, my first obstacle was finding a place to pee before the race! Nesbit park is about a 40 minute drive from my house, no restroom, and because of Covid I can’t do what I used to do and stop at a nearby restaurant. Normally I would go in the woods, but it’s winter, there are no leaves on the trees, and the beautiful weather meant the park was chock full of people! We headed off the trails, thinking surely no one would be back there, and ran into a young couple canoodling. Headed behind a massive stack of brambles and poison ivy and here comes an escaped toddler and his grandpa! Ahhhh! Finally got the job done but it was ridiculous.

Second obstacle, not getting lost. Nesbit park is a maze. In years past, while practicing, we have always gotten lost, and sometimes even gotten into fight over getting lost. This year we had prepared - we took marking tape and went over the course as shown on the website. Of course, the posted course on the Series website turns out to be not the way the racers went on the race day itself - they changed the start to avoid closing the road. But! I came armed with a Strava route based on data from someone running the actual race. We walked the changed part and marked it before starting. There were FIVE possible wrong turns in the quarter mile from the road to the bike obstacles! The good news is, it appeared that the trail markers we had set up in practice were undisturbed.

Our race started off just as planned, except that there was a child riding a mountain bike on the mountain bike obstacles! So we had to pause for a moment and make a mad dash for it when the way was clear. First mile still on target, 10:35. Second mile, starting to get tricky, again right on pace, 11:03. Third mile, the one I call the Stairmaster, basically a mile of jumping uphill over tree roots, bang on, 10:59.

One of the things that makes Stanky Creek fun is that it’s mostly true singletrack, along ridges and through furrows, treacherous footing, and there are plenty of places where if you set a foot wrong you will launch yourself head-first into the trunk of the nearest tree. Both my husband and I have done this in years past! In fact we have joked that you haven’t truly run Stanky Creek until you have faceplanted IN Stanky Creek, which is black mud runoff from the nearby town of Bartlett. If I’m going to fall, usually I do it during mile 3 by catching a toe on a root and catapulting myself into the ground, or slipping on the rotating muddy log “bridge” for bicycles, which for runners is worse than if they just left the mud alone.

Well, I ran that part just fine, was slowing down to get a good steady run down into one of the steep descents across a gully, and it was like someone suddenly nailed my foot to the floor! Some helpful park maintenance person, presumably trying to prevent the trail from washing out any further, had poured concrete sort of kind of across part of the trail and into the gully, and because I was looking ahead and not at my feet, I didn’t see the terrain change when I stepped on it with only one foot. The rough concrete surface grabbed the lugs of one shoe compared to the soft dirt under the other foot, and smack down I went!
I wasn’t really hurt - one skinned knee and a bruised hip, hands dirty - but it shocked the wind out of me and threw me off my stride. My husband said trust me to find the only four-by-four foot square area of concrete in the whole park and fall on it. I jumped up and continued running, but quickly found my footwork was shaky and I didn’t feel comfortable going at full speed over tricky bits. I took a walk break and got some stamina back, but never fully recovered. And my sloppy footwork led to me catching a stick between my feet and tripping myself a little later.

Mile 4, including my fall, 12:35.

So far we had successfully avoided getting lost, due to our trail markers. But now we came to a three way fork in the road, and it wasn’t at all clear from the Strava route which vague bend in the path went the right direction. “I can’t believe we didn’t mark this!” I yelled, as we plunged down what seemed like probably the right path. “I don’t remember a fork there at all!” my husband shouted back. “And the Strava heat map says no one has ever gone that way, I swear it wasn’t there before!”
Spoiler: he was absolutely right. Two new trails had been plowed out of the virgin earth since the last time we had been there a month earlier. Read on to discover why.

It turned out we had guessed the correct path, although our hesitation cost us several seconds. By the time we reached the creek jump my legs were feeling a little more steady, and we managed a respectable sprint to the finish. Time - 57:11 - mile time 11:26. Not what I had been aiming for, but good enough for 5th in AG if I had been running the race, behind my doppelgänger who was 3rd and one other person who is usually slightly slower than I am. I feel like I could probably have managed 4th if I hadn’t fallen, not quite in good condition enough to have kept up my starting pace and caught the lady in 3rd. Overall what I would call respectable compared to my performance in previous years! And we survived Stanky Creek!

Staged race photos, taken at the same location as the photos from the official race photographer! We could identify it by this diagonal branch! Also, my poor knee!




So, that’s the wrap on our private Winter Series for me and my husband, four runs on trails and four on roads. Comparing our performance on the same courses as the official off-road trail series to the results of the series, and adding up the points for my finishes in each race, I would have been 2nd in AG out of 23, with awards three deep - the fastest lady in my AG is just blisteringly fast and took 3rd overall, making her ineligible for AG awards, and the second fastest lady took the senior master award. My doppelgänger won the AG, besting my times in every race but the 3k, and I am right behind her in every race but Big Stanky. I feel kind of bad that she didn’t get the chance to beat me for real and wave her trophy in my face, since last year I knocked her off the podium in a way that was deeply unsatisfying to her - we were tied, and I got an extra point for finishing all four races in the series. Hopefully we will get the chance to meet in person and whoop the tar out of each other next year!

Remember the mystery of the three way fork in the road? After the race my husband and I went for a walk, and decided to follow the Little Stanky course for a change of scenery. We didn’t get very far because of this:

That’s the long wooden bridge across the creek, built and signed I believe by the Boy Scouts, and it has just been OBLITERATED by a giant fallen tree! The tree looks healthy and it appears all the rain soaked the ground so much that the roots just gave way. Good thing Little Stanky had already been run, because ain’t nobody going that way now! The gully is pretty much impassible without the bridge. And thus... there are several new paths which have been hastily carved out to steer people away from that section of park! Aha! Mystery solved, my husband is NOT going insane!