Saturday July 4 2020
With Corona virus hysteria at fever pitch, my excruciatingly carefully planned multi-state race calendar for 2020 has been taking a battering. The events have been falling like dominoes, often with the profiteering race director not even having the honesty to cancel, but instead announcing the exciting switch to ‘a virtual race’. If I ever meet anyone who thinks a virtual race is fun, the meeting will be brief.
Most of my car rentals, hotels/Air BnBs and flights have been refundable (flights for credit) but there has only been one race (from, say, 15 and counting) to offer a refund. Most have offered race organisation company credit, entry roll over, or the dreaded ‘virtual race’ PR line.
Anyway, my original Indiana race was the Tell City half marathon over Easter weekend. That was canned. But recently, as I’d dared to once again start perusing runningintheusa for events that might not be cancelled – and fitted my now rapidly opening schedule – I found the DINO series of trail races in Indiana. DINO stands for Do Indiana Outdoors – a cool idea for a company. There was an event taking place on Saturday July 4 at Muscatatuck State Park – The DINO Series, 15K Trail, and especially with that particular date resonating little with me, I booked flights, rental & Air BnB and off I went. I flew into Cincinnati on Friday morning and drove the 90 minutes to North Vernon. A lovely little rail town, and I had the whole BnB to myself. I walked in the searing heat to the local eatery, Grateful Grub, and spent the rest of Friday relaxing, reading and sleeping.
I thought I was pretty well ready for a race, having run a decent amount during our recent vacation to Antigua, kept up my goal of 40 miles plus per week, and running a 9 miler in my new Hoka Rincons last week at 06.50 pace.
Antigua had been searingly hot and steamy – with tough elevations – and I think that made running back in Charlotte easy, but a 15k hilly trail run in the July morning sun is no joke. Muscatatuck Park is a lovely place, but the DINO course requires concentration for the technical, and determination for the undulating hills and twisty trails.
It was a high quality local crowd of athletes, who seemed to know the course well, and as the race went out, it quickly split into a lead group, a trailing group, a third, and the others. The pace seemed hot, but I pushed into the second group as the elites took off ahead. I didn’t feel like I could, but I ended up picking off everyone in this second group and finishing 8th overall out of around 100, 2nd in my age group. Not bad for a tough run. As ever, one wonders what might have been, and I wondered whether I could have pushed into that elite group early, and challenged, but my overall feeling from the event was satisfaction. I was so happy to have been racing again, and felt lucky to have been able to tick off state number 27.
North Vernon, and rural Indiana generally, had a refreshingly relaxed approach to the now standardised moral superiority of masked citizen duty. Airports and planes were contrary to this approach of course, but at least masks cover face expressions – so that’s something when surrounded by the social media posturing pricks that often seem to fill our lives – they can’t see you scowl!
On that cheery note, I’m off to keep up my mileage for 2020 in 2020, and to plan my last minute running escape to Bryce Canyon UT for next weekend!
This was my first race running in my new Nike Zoom Wildhorse 6s!
Racing Americana 