Running 1:30:00 [4] 18.0 km (5:00 / km) +186m 4:45 / km
shoes: Saucony Kinvara TR
Everytime I run a 5 Peaks race, I think, "Gee, this was not the greatest $57 I've ever spent".
Terwilligar is certainly a great place for a trail race. There's tons of single track, and some really fun and technical stuff at the top of the river valley. If you cut out some of the silly field stuff, THIS is where you could do a 5k terrain run. Its clearly a trail, so you can blast, but its off-camber, its twisty, rooty, rolling, really good.
For me, this is just a re-hashing of Frank's XC. Francois materializes at the start line, and I hang on as long as I can. I kept him in touch for the first 5k, and he continued to stay in sight until about 9.5 when we entered the trees for the second time. Once I climbed out of the river valley to begin the fun singletrack I encountered it.
The lineup.
See, they didn't start the sport runners soon enough after the enduro runners, so this was the point where we started catching them. I came around the corner to the start of the singletrack, saw literally a line-up of 30 people (half of them in costume), and BAM, tripped on a root. So now they're all looking at me, bleeding from my hand, as I now proceed to go straight to the front of the line, wait for one lady to slide down on her butt down this steep pitch, and then pass a continuous stream of people for the entire length of this 1.2k section. First time through I took 5:50, second time through 7:07. And its not like its restful, you're still working hard, because you slow down, pass, and then accelerate to the next person to pass again, in addition to saying "on your left" and "thank you", many, many times.
And its not like the passing ended then, it took another 3k of mixed double and single-track before the pack thinned out quite a bit. I realize Francois had to deal with all these people too, but its a disappointment because we just didn't get to race 2/3 of the second lap. I'm pleased with how I hung in there the first lap, but that second lap is just a bummer. Results also took two days to sort out, because many people (including myself) where not considered to have registered at all.
And that, is why 5 Peaks races are not worth $57.