Ran the 20th Anniversary edition of the Sulphur Springs 10k Trail Run on Saturday with my 17 year old son, Graham. It was our second time there, and this was a far cry from last year's cool, damp conditions. Between another year of base-building, hitting a few more hill workouts, the dry conditions, and seeding ourselves closer to the front we really set ourselves up for success.
And what a success it turned out to be: 14th & 15th out of over 300 entrants. Not bad for a father/son team - but fully nine minutes faster than last year?! After the finish I even had to confirm with Joe Hewitt, the RD, that we took the right route at the foot of the final, killer, climb (we had.) The confusion stemmed from one runner just ahead of us who disappeared like a deer when she abruptly turned left at a ribbon we'd followed at the beginning of the run (it was a loop course.) A group of about six of us stopped in our tracks, second-guessing our judgment. We swivelled around, looking for a volunteer, an arrow pointing somewhere, a stack of rocks,
anything but a ribbon from the start of the race when we were now just a kilometre from the finish! Standing still at a race: nope, never done that before...
Like a half dozen sweaty adventure tourists waiting at the wrong site for a helicopter rendezvous, we shared a few smiles and sentence fragments, "Aren't we supposed to... ?" "Do you think we should... ?" then we collectively shrugged and bolted for the hill home. This just added to the sense of the event's relative quaintness. The glorious weather, beautiful trails, and relaxed atmosphere made for a sublime running experience, one that I am looking forward to repeating next year (and perhaps at one of the longer distances, if I can just figure out how to convince Graham that extending our training runs is a
really cool idea.)
a very neat participants' perk: New Balance sandals with a map of the course embossed on the soles! My son's pair is the bigger one...
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