Today, our guest Blogger is Jennifer S. writing about her experience with the Brand Spanking New Wrenthem Trail Race.
I go to Wrentham and sign up. I'm number23 and I think only one more person signed up behind me. That makes mychances for a top 25 finish start to look real good.... We take off up tothe top of the ski "hill" (elevation gain 35 feet?) where we are told that there are coming and going streamers, but to stay left. Can do, so we gettot he top and I'm in about 5th place. The top of the hill has a whole crowd of teenagers from the HS x-country team there to volunteer and to, nodoubt, see a "real" trail race... ;-)
Streamers shoot off to the left andI see others go straight--I ask "go left?" Yes! Yes! comes the anxious reply. Go left! So, I go left and the course starts to wind through some rough trails and then dumps us out on a fire road where streamers can nowbeen seen going left and right. There is mass confusion and my early strong position has been reduced to a huddle of lost and confused runners. We decide to go left, which turns out to be the correct decision. I believe we were probably supposed to have done something different up there on that hill, but we're on our way now and the mood has been set for the day.
This is where adventure racing skills helped me out. I continually caughtrunners who couldn't follow the streamers and a few gave up trying to stay ahead and just stuck behind me and let me lead. It was very empowering andit was a strategy that paid off for them as we continually caught up toother faster runners at trail junctions when they got confused and decided to wait for us.
Needless to say, I was feeling pretty smug about the wholething, especially as I start to drop some of the runners behind me...untilthe last mile. As we're running up a park road, I say to my last runningpartner, "I'd be a lot happier if I saw another ribbon about now." We continue on and I'm really getting worried. We pop out to a road and justas I'm about to declare that we've missed a turn, I look left and see the pink streamers again and an aid station. Yahoo! We run up and the teen girls manning the station seem surprised to see us. We're the first ones to come through apparently. They give us water, but when ask for help with directions, they don't know the course and aren't sure at first until we tell them where the finish line is. Now they, being cross country runners, know and they point us to the streamers and we're off. But something still doesn't seem right and me and my buddy get to another trail junction where streamers go right and left. We see a runner ahead and decide to follow him. We arrive at the finish line and several of the runners that had been behind had finished head of me. I tell the RD that they must have gone off course since the girls at the third aid station said we were the only ones to come through.
He's now terribly confused, because there was no third aid station. So, after several minutes of confused note comparison, we realizethat I did indeed miss streamers that went off to the left and by goingstraight to the road, I had inadvertently put me and my running mate ontothe course of the Wrentham 5k Wroad Wrace! So much for me and my superior navigation skills!
