Who's this Stu guy, I'm going to kick his ass!

Today in my endless parade of races, Stu's 30k came up. What... the... fuck?! I'd heard this course was hilly, but this, I was not expecting this. No wonder they put NO information on the web site about the course, elevation profile, or even how to get there. If they did, I'm quite sure no one would be stupid enough to show up. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind to the beginning, Saturday afternoon:

I was in a good mood. I'd managed to get out of the office after working only 5 hours and was excited about actually being able to get in a long ride, although it would not be as long as I had planned. I was in a good mood... that is, until I saw that I had a flat. Really, how does a tire go flat on a trainer? After a barrage of swearing, I took the whole damn thing apart, changed the tube, and spent another half an hour trying to get it seated right on the trainer again. Next time I buy something on ebay, I'm going for the second cheapest option.

My mood was only slightly dampened by my baffling technical difficulties. This was going to be a good ride. Not only was I fired up from Bob Almighty's Ironman finish in New Zealand (and inspired to work my booty off to achieve my goal of beating ONE of Bob's personal worsts someday), but my Netflix queue had finally hit Hell on Wheels. I rode like a demon, mixing variable gearing sets in with 30 and 60 minute time trials. Watching those Tour de France riders floating up hills like they were flat, and looking like they were born with bikes growing out of their butts gave me the strength of 10 men. When my energy was flagging, the sight of their astoundingly toned butts peeking through shredded shorts after a fall was enough to make me push even harder. I want a Tour de France butt! When I finally tore myself off the bike after 3 hours, I was feeling GREAT. I promised myself I would tape every stage of the Tour de France this summer and ride the whole thing in my living room. Now I see that that probably will not happen, but I raring to go then. And, and you know what else?! I was going to run like an animal tomorrow at Stu's 30k, too! This was the beginning of a new all ass kicking, all the time Claire, I could feel it! After writing in my journal for about an hour about how from now on until forever I was going to kick ass harder than ass has ever been kicked before, I went to bed to get ready for 30 kilometers of carnage. I was quite sure that carnage was going to be other people, not me.

The race start wasn't until 11:00, so I had time to do 30 minutes of yoga to get some of yesterday's muck out of my legs before a breakfast of champions. As I was picking up my number (and not so pretty t-shirt), Gadfly Thom spotted me and we shot the shit while waiting for the start... And then, my nemesis walked in. I had fought it out neck-in-neck for 9 miles in a trail race with this never-say-die adversary in November. I had finally passed him half a mile from the end only to get out-kicked 10 yards from the finish. It was, without a doubt, the hunch-backed septuagenarian himself, GRANDPA! Oh, it was on now. Grandpa was going to be the first victim of my new, bloodthirsty badass Claire persona.

I pointed Grandpa out to Thom. "That guy's going down!" I said. "You see him over there? The old guy with the hump standing by the pillar? His ass is grass!" I then told Thom about our epic battle, how I'd been hanging on behind him for miles before he tripped and fell head over heels, which is when I made my first attack, then how he passed me on an uphill and how I was chasing him down for miles and miles. Then I told Thom about the heartbreaking end where I finally passed him, only to lose ground again on an itty, bitty little incline leading back to the finish.
"Oh, that guy's an avid trail runner," Thom said. Thom's done like every race in New England about 20 times each. "You'll get to see him again at Eastern States and a couple of other races this summer." Game on, tampon! So this race now had a purpose: me against Grandpa, and I was out for some 70-year-old blood.

The start was uneventful. We lined up, there were no announcements, no national anthem, just a whistle and everyone started running. I caught up to Thom again for a second and made sure to say loud enough for anyone who was interested to hear me, "I did a 3 hour hard ride yesterday. I'm just getting that excuse out now, just in case I need it later." I wouldn't need it later, I thought, I was made of 130 lb of nothing but lean, mean, running machine.

Right after setting up my excuse, I let Thom go, and a guy named Tim asked me what I was training for. For the next 5 miles or so I ran with Tim chatting about triathlons and moving into topics that became more and more personal: relationships, how badly we wanted Tour de France butts, what the texture of goos reminded us of... At the first mile Tim looked down at his Garmin, "Right about 9 minutes," he said. Oops, that was a little bit fast for an 18.64 mile course, but hey, I had company. "Or do you not want me to tell you?" Tim asked.
"Actually, I prefer to not know," I said. I wanted to surprise myself with the lightning-fast miles the new badass me was going to pull out. We continued to chat up a pretty steep hill. I tried to ignore it and continue to keep Tim talking to get my mind off of it.
"Well, we're climbing now, so I understand if you don't want to talk," Tim said. Damn, there went my distraction. This was some hill. Was it ever going to end? Over every ridge and around every turn, it became very clear that no, it was not ever going to end.

When I finally let Tim go I latched on to another woman who had mentioned she'd done two ironmans. I listened to her banal advice on ironman ("don't have a time goal", well yeah, I'd heard that before, thanks), and then triathon in general, and then marathons and played stupid to keep her talking and keep my mind off these god damned hills. What the hell WAS this?! For every 10 minutes we climbed, we got about 1 minute of gradual descent before we had to grind up another hill. No, really, I'm not kidding, these grades went over 20% in places and hovered in the 10+ region for extended periods of time. Well, that is, if the Garmin profile can be trusted. Oh my god, please keep talking, lady! I thought. "So, was Florida... hot?" I asked.

Finally the Veteran dropped back around mile 8 and I was left to brave it on my own. I was already feeling decidedly less bloodthirsty, and my legs were telling me that what I was trying to make them do was seriously fucked up. But let's take a break from my suffering for a moment to discuss the course. The snow from earlier in the weekend had passed, and it was a bright, sunshiny day. The course was one giant loop around the Wachusett Reservoir, and the scenery was absolutely beautiful. It was that rural New England kind of beautiful where there were great expanses of white snow everywhere that would blind you if you'd forgotten your sunglasses, a sprinkling of quaint-looking farm houses, and really great lake views all the way around. The temperatures were actually pretty warm, somewhere in the high 30's, which is perfect running weather when you've gotten used to some of the shit we've had to put up with this winter. Oh, and there were 20 mph winds. There was that too. At one point we crossed a land bridge across the lake and I thought that if I spread my arms too wide, I would get picked up and swept away.

So, like I said, I was hurting. I berated myself for doing a race tired... again. I always get through it, so I always forget how much it hurts. But it sucks, now I remembered. I was already into survival mode running, and it was only mile 10. I caught myself, just for a moment, getting ready to feel sorry for myself, but then I thought of a phrase that just recently re-entered my vocabulary when I heard it for the first time in a long time the other day (not aimed directly at me). "Harden the fuck up, Claire," I told myself. Savage competitors do not feel sorry for themselves.

Luckily, half way through mile 12 the hills laid off a bit. Which is not to say that they went away, they just flattened out a bit. After mile 14 the miles actually started going by pretty quickly, but not in that "oh my! we've gone 8 miles already" kind of way, it was more like the "I don't remember a single thing from the last 10k of that marathon" kind of way. For about half a mile I could hear breathing and footfalls right over my shoulder. It was extremely disorienting and distracting, having someone else's rhythm in my head like that. Come around, idiot, come around, I thought. Finally, after I thought that for sure listening to her footsteps was going to make me lose my balance and fall over, she came up next to me. "I hope I'm not driving you nuts," she said, "it's just that you're going the perfect pace."
"You kind of are," I admitted. "But that's okay," I added quickly. I could smell a distraction, and didn't want to scare her off. Alas, she pulled on ahead of me, faster than I could force my legs to go.
I caught her again later and forced her into conversation with me for over a mile (and over an enormous hill) at mile 16, which probably saved my life. "My butt and hamstrings are so sore, I'd like to have them amputated," I admitted to her. We'd started lurching over hills again, and I was having none of it. Iron Matron had tried to warn me, but had I listened? Nooooooooooooooo! " Are you doing Stu's? If you do I can't WAIT to hear your report of that one. It's a tad hilly--.:)" she'd said. In case you haven't figured it out, that smiley face at the end means "it's more than just a tad hilly". And here I was, 18 miles into this fucking thing, and still struggling over hills that felt like they were vertical. My Garmin beeped a couple of times while I was still running. It's only set to pause when I've gone under a 17-minute mile. That steep. A couple of times I had to walk. Only for a few seconds, but there was just no way.

At the bottom of the last hill there were volunteers letting us know that there would be no more climbing today. I thought for sure that it would just be a block or two, then we'd make a turnoff and that would be the end. "How much longer?" I asked one of the volunteers after I'd gotten over the top and caught my breath.
"About a mile," he said. WHAT?!?!?! I repeat: What... the... fuck?!

You would think it couldn't get any worse, but you'd be wrong. As I ran the last 400 yards to the finish line the biggest gust of wind I'd felt since the causeway blew in, head on, and fought with me every inch of that last quarter mile. I'd hoped to break 3 hours, but stumbled in in 3:04:03. Any attempts I had to sprint in and break 3:04 were foiled by the damn acceleration-sucking wind.

I promise you, I didn't even walk more than a few seconds. All that suckage is hills.

18.7 Garmin miles, and 2,550 feet of total ascent behind me, and I was beat. I hobbled into the school where people seemed intent on blocking my path. Does that happen to you? Where you're concentrating so hard on staying upright that walking around someone who's standing still in your path seems impossible? Then I got stuck behind some kids in the food line and they had to pick up and inspect every single bag of Fritos and every package of Hostess Snowballs before moving on. Then they had to ask the lesbian lunch lady with 13 hoops in each ear how many times her ears were pierced. I was tired, but not so tired I couldn't muster up the strength to throw a 7-year-old into a vat of boiling clam chowder.

As I tried to swallow giant hunks of bagel and a bag of oyster crackers I chatted with Thom about his race. He'd finished eons earlier, and had still been beaten by a 65-year-old guy. His friend, who was even faster, had been beaten by a 75-year-old woman. "Sucks, doesn't it?" I said. I could see Granpa milling around the cafeteria, snacking and hob-nobbing. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to know if I gave him the ass whooping that was 4 months overdue. I was too tired to go get up in his face to scream, "3:04:03, what do you have to say to THAT, you hunched-over motherfucker?!" And anyway, if I had to run away he'd come after me, I wasn't so sure I could out-kick him this time.

When I started shivering so badly I was burning my hand with my sloshing hot cocoa, it was time to go home. It was almost 4:00 anyway, and I needed a shower and some real food. But I didn't have return directions printed up, and I seemed to make the wrong decision at every unmarked fork (of which there were many) between the lake and my house. I didn't really have any huge adventures while I was lost, but do you know how much that sucks when you're hungry and tired and just want a shower? It sucks.

~Epilogue~

I checked the results on Coolrunning.com. There I am, in 268th place in 3:04:03.77. Then scroll down. Scroll waaaaaaay down. Scroll down 33 places and sixteen minutes and thirteen point fifty-four seconds later (16:13.54), there's Grandpa in 301st place with a time of 3:17:17.31. Grandpa is TOAST!