Since it was pouring Saturday night I made the Babcock Farms race a game-time decision. It's the first 'official' race in the Roots Rock Trail Series circuit, connected with the 25k I did in March. But the sun was out in the morning so I headed up. Small crowd again, maybe 50 people. Sunday mornings just don't draw a big crowd, which is too bad because these races are well-run and use a beautiful forest. This one starts one road down from Port Gamble, by the Hood Canal Nursery. Someone forgot to unlock a cow gate, so the start had to be moved up about 200 meters. Didn't want to turn the beginning of the race into a steeplechase, I guess. Because of the altered start, we basically began at the base of a hill. So it was straight uphill, a pretty steep 400m or so through a grassy field. Then you wind through the backside of a farm, like an English style cross country course. Ups and downs, little ravines, etc. I was the third guy up the hill, and stayed there through the farm and into the woods. In the woods I stayed on the tail of a guy I've raced before. I was pushing him until the first single-track loop, where he missed the turn. I yelled at him and thought he followed me and another guy who had caught up. I led through that single track section, which was a blast. The other guy took over for me after we came back out on the road, and he led through the second single track section, which was mainly downhill. We were screaming through tight little turns and dips, jumping logs, etc. Pretty fun, but ankle-twisting territory. Still, we had a pretty quick pace going, I wanted to make sure to stay until 6/minute miles.
Then the race emerges back onto the logging roads toward the finish. The guy leading me made a great racing move on a big downhill. There's a long curve on the hill, and as soon as he stretched out a 20-25m lead he put on a big surge. So I was near him and tried to freewheel and keep up a good pace, thinking I'd still be there all the way down the hill. But when the road straighted again he was up 100m or so. Nice surge when I couldn't see, and after the race he told me that was his plan. So he was a little farther ahead than I could go for at that point, but I kept a good pace to hold off what I thought was the guy we left at the single track. He never caught up, then at the end claimed he got lost (while insinuating he definitely would have been in second place. (C'mon guy, learn to follow the course.) So I took third, which I was pretty happy with. It'll be a good start if I do the series. 29:21 overall, though it was about 200m short. So right around 30 minutes, which his what I wanted. And considering the big hill at the start and the windy route, that's pretty good. One mile warmup and one mile plus cooldown. pearl izumi trail
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