Pack Monadnock 10m Race Photos

On Sunday the Wolfe family was out in force at Pack Monadnock. Five of us were in Miller State Park, Alec was working with the timing company at the summit while the rest of us were manning the water stop at the base. Technically Deb, Jess and Ben were manning the stop, I was supervising, also known as taking pictures. All are veteran water-stoppers so they managed fine without me. We also had the help of 2/3 of the Delahunty triplets (Delahunti's?)

Water Stoppers in Action

At around 10:30am I left my photo duties and moved on to my bonus task for the day: riding my mountain bike to the summit and shuttling the results back down in a timely fashion (pun slightly intended). For some reason many runners thought this was easy and I was lucky. It certainly wasn't fast (I think it took me 10-12 minutes to reach the top). For the record, I did not ride the last 100m. The ride down took 47 seconds (or something like that).

Pack Monadnock Photos

Hmm, I see a trend here...

Moose on the Loose 10 Miler

Yesterday I headed down to familiar stomping grounds for the Moose on the Loose 10 Mile 'trail' Race in Mine Falls Park. This was the 5th race of the New Hampshire Grand Prix series and our club really needed a boost to get back into the series lead. It is essentially the home turf of the Gate City Striders and the members did not disappoint with 50+ strong toeing the line. GCS took a 188-128 victory over the Greater Derry Track Club and now leads the series by 50 points!

Listed as a trail race (and relay), and technically it does run on trails, the race more closely resembles a road race. It is fast and flat and not technical at all. Fast guys win. Period. In fact, it was so not a trail race that I wore my racing flats. Not a complaint, just a fact. It was also one of the bigger Mine Falls races I've ever seen, with something like 388 runners (10 milers and relay runners) taking part. The course was a 2.5 mile loop (x4), with just over 1/2 in the shade with the last mile somewhat exposed along the canal.

Weather once again played a big factor in this race, with temps at or near 90 degrees. It was just plain hot. Thankfully there were TWO water stops on the 2.5 mile loop and I took advantage of each one, taking a small sip and dumping the rest on my head. I had no goal for this race and would run on feel alone (and I felt awful most of the time!). For the first time in a very long time I honestly had no idea what pace I was running and just focused on a comfortably hard effort instead. For the first couple of laps I ran with Mike Wright and maybe 30 yds behind Cathy Merra and 50 yds behind Tim Burke. Mike eventually dropped back but Cathy and Tim held their positions for most of the race. On the 3rd lap I finally noticed I was gaining a bit so they became my targets, I mean goal, for the 4th lap. I finally caught Cathy somewhere in the 1st mile of the last lap and now focused on Tim, catching him just after the high school bridge in the last mile of the race. I made sure to go by with as much authority as I could muster since I didn't want a sprint to the finish. I was hoping I could go by fast enough that he wouldn't try to hang on. Thankfully it worked...this time. I definitely worked hard on the last lap, clocking my fastest lap of the day and finishing 15th overall in 1:05:24. Complete results can be found here along with some pics taken by Ethan Platt.
(photo credit - Ethan Platt)

Lap Splits for the day:
lap 1 (2.5 mile) 16:07
lap 2 (2.5 mile) 16:30
lap 3 (2.5 mile) 16:48 ouch!
lap 4 (2.5 mile) 15:59

2009 New Hampshire Grand Prix Series

Ok, here are the NHGP races for 2009. The series is supposed to be a friendly competition between NH running clubs but historically only a few clubs actively participate (Gate City Striders, Greater Derry Track Club and Granite State Racing Team). I think the other clubs are:
- Rochester Runners Club
- New Hampshire Athletic Alliance
- White Mountain Milers
- Monadnock Regional Milers
- Coastal Athletic Alliance

Personally I've only run 3 of the 7 races: Great Bay, Foothealth and Moose on the Loose and only enjoyed 2 of these. So who exactly picks these races anyways? 5/7 races have basically less than 100 finishers. Why not pick races most of us are already going to? I'm not sure I understand the logic of the selection process. Oh well.

My prediction for 2009: Greater Derry Track Club (GDTC) will win the series.

Great Bay Half Marathon- Sunday April 5th, Newmarket

• 1,114 finishers in 2008
• Yankee Timing

Foothealth 5K - Saturday May 2nd, Derry

• 70 finishers in 2008
• New England Timing
  

Smuttynose 5K- Sunday June 7th, Newmarket

• 641 finishers in 2008
• Yankee Timing
  

St Anne's 5M - Saturday July 25th, Hampstead

• 104 finishers in 2008
  
• Granite State Race Services
  

Moose on the Loose 10M - Sunday August 23rd, Nashua

• 93 finishers in 2008
• Yankee Timing
  

Alliance Against Cancer 5k - Saturday September 12th, Manchester

• 103 finishers in 2008
• Granite State Race Services
  

Fall Foliage 5M - Saturday October 10th, Warner

• 79 finishers in 2008
• Granite State Race Services
  

On a side note:
While checking the above races for 2009 websites, I saw a blurb on the Great Bay website about a new timing chip for 2009 called the Chronotrack D-Tag. It's a disposable timing chip that still attaches to your shoe but doesn't have to be returned and is lighter. My initial thought is although it's neat, I think it really benefits the race director and not the runner. The tag is part of the Bib so they don't have to worry about matching bibs with timing chips and they don't have to worry about runners forgetting to return them. The runner still has to attach it to their shoe and I doubt most of us would notice the the weight savings of the paper chip vs those weighty ChampionChips. They also claim the new chip is easier to attach to your shoe as well. I've watched the video, I personally think lacing my shoelace through the ChampionChip is easier. From a runners point of view the perfect solution would keep the chip fully incorporated in the Bib and not have to tie anything to my shoe. Now that would be sweet.

Below is a link to a PDF showing how the new chip is used. I also attached a video showing essentially the same thing.

Chronotrack D-Tag instructions