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Lincoln Valentine's 3.4 Miler
22 Feb 03 - Lincoln, VA |
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| These links lead to pages outside of the SVR Web site, and are here just for fun. The club bears no responsibility for the content of the linked pages! |
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One of many water obstacles at Lincoln
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When the Potomac Valley Track Club, the Montgomery County Road Runners Club, and the Howard County Striders all cancelled races they'd been planning to hold on the weekend of February 22nd and 23rd, perhaps we should've taken the hint. Instead, with the Lincoln Valentine's 3.4 Miler having been postponed due to snow back on the 15th, we pressed ahead and held the race on the 22nd, despite heavy rain, temperatures hovering a couple degrees above freezing, and a course which could charitably be described as treacherous.
So how did this race get held, considering that we postponed the Tandems 5K on the first of the month due to course conditions which were arguably better than those at Lincoln? Well, your author ran the Lincoln course on the afternoon before the race, and I found it to be periodically slippery but for the most part runnable. We knew rain was in the forecast for
Guy Tomberlin in the slush
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race morning, but after discussing the situation with some other SVR members, race director Raylene Scott and I decided it would be okay to proceed with the race if we alerted runners to the mud and slush beforehand.
What we didn't expect, however, was the rain pooling up along the unpaved course, creating large swaths of standing water-- sometimes with slush and ice underneath. Raylene and I didn't really have a chance to reassess the course prior to the start, unfortunately. And when a few of the forty-two participants began to slip and fall within fifty meters of the starting line, I thought, Darnit, we should've cancelled the race. | |
Treading warily down the slippery first downhill
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But by that point, it was too late... and the adventure had begun!
Third place finisher Brad Rippey found the race to be such a wild experience that he was compelled to write his own race report. Since Brad does such a fine job describing the race, we'll let him take over from here...
"You know it's going to be an interesting run when some folks start the race sliding downhill on their backsides. In more than eighteen years of running and sixteen years of racing, I've never gone out for more than twenty minutes in conditions as poor as we experienced at the Lincoln 3.4 Miler. By the time we all made it safely back to the Lincoln meeting house-- albeit slightly scraped and bruised-- I think we all realized we had accomplished a nearly superhuman feat: running nearly three and one-half miles in 36° weather through heavy rain and across terrain like nothing we had ever experienced on foot. It made the worst cross-country course you've ever run seem like a few laps around the track. It seemed more like the Yukon tundra during the spring thaw than Virginia in February, and the variety of conditions we faced-- mud, slush, snow, ice, soft gravel, hard gravel, standing water, and running water, to name a few-- were an assault on the senses and took total concentration to navigate safely. In fact, conditions were so bad I barely noticed the well-advertised hilliness.
Brad Rippey
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"Hard to believe, but for the first mile or so, I actually tried to keep my feet dry. Best as I could, I stayed on the hard-packed part of the road and did my best to avoid the many rivulets. That plan quickly went out to sea during the second half of the race, starting with a 20- to 30-foot slog through about eight inches of water mixed with slush. The experience was quite numbing, and it actually took a few dozen steps to feel my feet again. Imagine: no need to ice any foot or ankle injuries after the race. Your lower extremities got iced while you ran. There were several other low spots later on the course that also required wading, some with a layer of ice on the bottom thrown in for good measure.
"Other than men's winner Mark Stickley, I'm not sure any of us made it through the race without falling. The Stickman had a couple of close calls, but came through unscathed a few ticks short of twenty minutes. The second finisher, Alan Thatcher of Manassas, slipped badly around the first turn but stayed upright. He wasn't so lucky on the race's last downhill when he went down not once but twice, skinning nearly every knuckle in the process. Thinking I could avoid his mistake | |
Alan Thatcher
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and perhaps even catch him, I ran in deep slush to the side rather than on the icy layer in the middle of the road. I lost my balance anyway, and catapulted forward shoulder first into a deep snowbank. It took several seconds to extricate myself, after which I slowed down and settled for third place. Farther back, fourth-place finisher Ted Poulos was one of those who started the race on his back, while women's winner Rachel Eisenfeld came home with a skinned knee, despite running in cleats.
"None of us at the Lincoln 3.4 Miler is ever going to forget the experience. But despite the risks and (hopefully) minor injuries we sustained, I hope I'm in the majority by saying, 'Thanks, SVR, for having the guts to hold the race. It's one I won't soon forget.'"
Thank you, Brad, for your brutally honest report! Brad was not the only one whose feet got chilled; Russell Lockhart probably had the worst time with the icy water, having to walk much of the last half of the race due to his chilly extremities. (Many thanks to Ric Francke for hanging back to make sure Russell was okay.) But thankfully many runners did finish the race without harm. Nancy Specht was among them, noting to me as she approached the final hill, "In all my years of running,
Stewart Lockhart goes for a slide
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I've never fallen-- and I'm not about to start now!" Stewart Lockhart, meanwhile, decided to tempt fate by intentionally sending himself into a slide down the final downhill, but he did a commendable job of keeping his feet under him. Those with trail running and ultrarunning experience may have been able to deal with conditions the best; Jonathan Whitehead said that this "was probably the most fun I've ever had running a course."
As Brad noted, Mark Stickley had an easy time defeating the rest of the men's competition, although his finish time of 19:56 was two minutes slower than his winning time at the 2001 race, thanks to this year's course conditions. Alan Thatcher ran his strongest race so far in this year's series, beating Rippey, Poulos, and Mark Vann for the first time. Also faring very well was Charles Bowles, who stayed on his feet and came in ahead of Vann and Neal Riemenschneider for fifth overall. Meanwhile, with Rachel Eisenfeld well out in front among the women, the women's race for second place was between Mary Smith | |
Tracy Rice
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and Tracy Rice. Mary stayed strong enough to hold off Tracy for second by about half a minute. Lorie Weimar was another half minute back for fourth place, and fifth place went to Tracy's sister, new SVR member Michelle See.
Despite the thoroughly soaked finish cards, many runners did get their pens working well enough to answer this week's post-race poll question: "What is your favorite love song of all time?" (This was our Valentine's race, after all!) I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that the number one response, chosen by David Black, Guy Tomberlin, and Lorie Weimar, was "Singin' in the Rain", a well-known number sung by Gene Kelly in the 1952 film of the same name. "Unchained Melody" (best known from the Righteous Brothers' 1965 version) and George Harrison's immortal Beatles tune "Something" were each picked twice. Songs by Air Supply (!?) and Chicago also got a couple nods each. (How did a 16-year-old like Rachel Eisenfeld find out about Chicago?) Your musician author was impressed that a few soul tunes were picked, although he's perplexed as to why nobody chose anything by Barry White or Marvin Gaye. Where was "You're The First, The Last, My Everything"? Where was "Let's Get It On"? Sigh...
Lisa Radler
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Of course we can always count on a few folks to give odd responses to our poll questions. Neal Riemenschneider apparently thinks that Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" ("one pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small") qualifies as a love song, which leaves us feeling sorry for his wife Ruth. Kevin Shea boldly picked Sir Mix-A-Lot's ribald "Baby's Got Back". Mary Smith, at a loss for a good answer, wrote down "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns 'N Roses. And speaking of metal, Chuck Bowles chose "Sabbra Cadabra" as performed by Metallica; we hope he realizes that the original version by Black Sabbath is much better! The best poll response, though, was Lisa Radler's choice of "Muskrat Love", a bizarre ditty popularized by the Captain & Tennille in 1976. Hey, we never said that the love song had to be about humans!
Any-hoo, thanks as always to Raylene Scott for her professional work as race director, and thanks as well to Alan Thatcher's brother Kevin, who handed out finish cards so that your author could take the 62 photos featured on our picture pages. And let's give a big thumbs-up to the folks at the Goose Creek Meeting House, who shoveled out their walkways on race morning and even got a cozy fire going in the fireplace before registration began. If we return to Lincoln in 2004, hopefully the weather will be better so that all we'll have to grouse about are the hills!
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