Nathan and I are one stage into our running vacation in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee. We drove up to Chattanooga from Greenville yesterday via the scenic route and stuffed ourselves with bread and pasta for the first stage of the Rock Creek 3 day stage race: 60 miles covering a different mountain each day. We were both a little under-trained for the event: the most I did was back-to-back 20 and 16 and he did 3 days in a row of 10 miles, but we are just here to have fun and celebrate the end of Step 1 of the USMLE exam and nearly two years of marriage.
The goal for day one was a simple one. All we wanted was to finish feeling good, and of course to have fun. The first stage was the easiest we'll have: 18 miles that were advertised as "flat...for Eastern Tennessee." We put ourselves at the back of the pack (perhaps a little too far back) and entered the woods with over 200 runners (255 registered, 211 finished today). We got caught in the walk-jog traffic that you get with any single-track race with more than 100 runners but soon found our place with a group of women from Asheville. We followed their pace for the first 8 miles.
We loved the course! Definitely more rocks, roots, and hills than you can find in Charleston. Not what I would call flat, but quite runnable. We got through the 8 mile aid station more quickly than the rest of our group and navigated the appropriately-named small intestine trail on our own. At the 13.3 mile aid station, Nathan decided he would go ahead of me for the final section to stretch his legs a bit since I was running fairly conservatively. Both of us passed lots of people in the final 5 miles, but given the 3 day nature of the race, this was the equivalent of passing some one at mile 15 of 60--not very consequential. There were some steep downhills in this section caused sharp pains in my IT band, but the last 2-3 miles were flat, even by my standards. It was mid-70s by the time we finished, and I was glad the race was the distance it was. Any further and dehydration would have become a factor, but as it was we were able to finish feeling good as planned (aside from the tree branch I took the gut just before the finish).
Nathan finished in 3:07 for 134th and me in 3:11 for 147th. I knelt in the ice bath to ice my IT band (with my feet sticking up in the air because they cramped immediately in the freezing water) but Nathan didn't like the look of all the dirt floating around it--understandable. We enjoyed the nice weather at the finish for a while before coming back for showers and leftover pasta--having a fridge and microwave in the hotel is wonderful! The whole morning was just plain fun. We suspect the next two days, the mountainous stages, may be more hard than fun. But since it's vacation, we will enjoy the pain.
-Jordan
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