Saturday September 12 2020
Before the insanity of pandemic response, Maine had been one of only two states not planned on my state running schedule for the proceeding 12 months. The other state was Alaska, which remains currently unscheduled, but as so many other races fell to the sword of cancellation, a race that had previously caught my attention, the Mahoosucs Ridge2River, in Newry, ME, surprisingly remained standing. Having now just finished the race, I wish it hadn’t, as I can hardly remain standing myself.
We flew from Charlotte to Portland on Thursday morning, and in our Hertz Manager’s Special Nissan Murano, drove the 10 minutes to our Marriott by the fish docks. We had a nice dinner from the local diner and watched James Bond on Netflix. Then next morning, we explored The Old Port area of Portland and its waterfront, before having lunch in the sun near The Bug Light park. We explored the rocky outcrop of The Portland Head Lighthouse, then made our way to the B&B in Newry. We had an evening walk around town, wandered down to the river and covered bridge, before picking up a few breakfast provisions from the local supermarket. Newry is a small ski town, with the looming presence of its surrounding Mahoosuc pistes impossible to ignore. Especially if you were expected to run up two of them the following morning. We had a nice dinner at Sud’s Pub, the large establishment practically empty of diners, then headed back to our quarters.
Lighthouses near Portland –
The covered bridge in Newry –
The next morning was Saturday, and race day. The nice old inn keeper, Sandra, had kindly offered me some Cheerios for breakfast, even though their kitchen facility was closed due to COVID. So I ate, hydrated, packed all my stuff – vest, gels, hydration, poles, mask… and drove us the short distance to Sunday River ski resort. I picked up my race packet, checked my poles were locking telescopically, and made my way to the start line. Having previously been asked to submit our best 5K times, I was first wave in the half marathon, and we headed out promptly at 1000.
This was a trail race like no other, with a vertical elevation gain that made the whole Sky Runner series look pleasant. We headed immediately up hill, before steaming downwards through grass, gravel and mud until just after 1 mile in. At this point, the race really got going, as we began transcending our first ski run. Pace dropped to a crawl and out came the running poles. I knew it was uphill all the way until mile 3, then we’d get flayed again miles 6-8. When we hit the wood line around mile 2, things got really crazy. Scrambling almost directly up on a rocky, muddy zigzag of a path that was difficult to climb up, let alone run up. As blue sky began to emerge into view, my back ached with a burn and my heart felt like it was about to burst through my chest wall, but the smooth stone mountain top came into view, and I kept pushing up as I heard an encouraging race official voice ahead. I scaled along the flat rock with hugely dramatic vistas either side of me and kept pushing on until we started to descend.
I thought this would be where my natural running strength of downhill speed would come into play, but the drops were so varied and steep, and the loose rock underfoot so treacherous, that every step of this whole race really had to be earned. Balance was so difficult that you couldn’t break into a normal running stride at any point until perhaps mile 11-12. So as my toes bashed against my shoes with the harsh descent, the pain was increased by my thighs taking a sharp jolt every single step, as they had to lock in a bent position, to stop me going forward too much and falling head first.
I went through ‘The Spider’ intersection for the first time around mile 4 (the day’s race routes mainly followed figure-of-eight patterns) and moved into some undulating tree covered standard trail terrain. Running with my poles outstretched by now, I was just finding a rhythm, starting to feel good, when I got upended by a root system and crashed down into a rock. This really knocked the wind out of my sails. I was physically stunned, really annoyed, and had a massive pain in the outside of my left thigh – the area that had taken the fall on the rock – that reverberated with every step I took from that point on.
The race was hellish – a painful challenge I had not been able to even imagine in advance. We hit our second ski run climb mile 6-7.75, had a brief rest bite, then climbed again as we hit some impossibly deep mossy grass terrain before descending again down to the Spider. The downhill was still painfully steep and even though I had taken down my gels, and Gatorade, I was starting to cramp. Having stopped for a second to rescue my short drawstring, my hamstrings started to cramp, followed by calves, as my strides remained restricted to painful focused stabs from one ledge to the lower. Around mile 11 we finally hit a road of some sort – it was still a ski run, and dusty loose gravel, but at least it wasn’t big sharp rocks.
I ground it out – pulling away from the guy in the pink, the guy in the blue who had been just behind me, and the impressive old guy who had caught us up; and even started to overtake some of the 10K runners, who had started their compressed course around 1100.
The finish to the race was, of course, horrendous. You emerge from the woods, traversing downhill, finish line in sight – but then have to turn right and head up hill for another third of a mile, around the tree line then down. By this point I was getting cramps around my left thigh in areas I didn’t even know had muscle fibre, and was in a serious amount of pain.
I ran through the finish line, had a water, and hobbled to the car. Becca had to drive for the rest of the trip and only time will tell how long it takes for me to recover. I placed 14th overall and 3rd in my Age group.
After our nice inn keeper had kindly let me grab a quick shower, we set off on our drive to Bar Harbor, stopping in Red’s Eats, Wiscasset for lunch but unfortunately the COVID panicked service was so slow that the line was taking literally hours. Instead, we ate lobster rolls at The Sea Dog Brewing Company in Camden, and continued along the beautiful coastal highway Route 1 until we got to our historic B&B in Bar Harbor, The Central House. We went immediately for a nice dinner with friends Michelle & Shaughnessy in the Black Friar Inn & Pub and retired to bed.
The next morning, I did an (extremely arduous) recovery run along the seafront before we headed out to Acadia National Park. We climbed The Beehive – a particularly difficult and terrifying experience considering how gingerly I was moving after the race – and explored Sand Beach. We drove around the rest of the park before grabbing a pick-up tea from the local supermarket and relaxing at the hotel. That evening we drove out to Aragosta at Goose Cove on Deer Isle for a spectacularly delicious dinner.
Monday we slept in, walked the scenic sea front of Bar Harbor, then set off to the tiny Bangor airport to fly home to Charlotte.
Friday we head to South Dakota, with a 16 mile race along the Mickelson Trail on the docket for state 31. Turning my body around to be ready for that, whilst still maintaining my 2020 miles for 2020 mileage, is going to be challenging. But I’m not sure anything will ever come close to beating the Mahoosuc challenge of the Ridge2River half!
Racing Americana 