dr_wu002
Well-known member
This is a 14 mile trail race with 2300' elevation gain. It starts at the base of Mt. Toby which is in Sunderland MA (about 10 miles or so North of Umass Amherst). From there you take a combination of dirt jeep roads and fire roads 7 miles up to the summit which is at about 1300' and has a fire tower. Then you turn around and run back. There's a good amount of climbing (1900' on the way in and 400' on the way out) and while there's not much slick rocks or roots to deal with, there's enough mud and stones laying around and leaves hiding the stones to make things a little interesting. Normally they run this race the last weekend in August, but Category 3 Hurricane Irene got this years cancelled so they ran it on Nov 13 instead and frankly, I hope that they keep it there.
This was my first time running and actually, I didn't sign up until the night before. There was a nice, hilly 1/2 marathon in Munson MA that I was considering but I'm 100% happy that I did the Mt. Toby Race instead! I ended up running fairly well... my time was 2:02:43, about a ~9:30 pace on the way in and ~8:30 pace on the way out. It is a very fast course (winning time was 1:32!!) and I think that I can shave off a good amount of time for next years race. Despite the elevation gain, 100% of the course is actually very runnable. And you can really blow open the downhill parts, especially coming off the summit. This race ended up appealing to me because I was able to maintain a "race pace" the entire way. Obviously I went slow on the uphills (race pace for me on a 5k is about 6:15/mile) but the constant speeding up and slowing down to accommodate the ups and downs made things fairly interesting. I always felt like I was in that "race pace" zone which I might not have if it was a longer course.
Overall, this was a pretty great race and I hope that more cool races start popping up like this. As much as I love hiking and just going for runs on my own (this course was easy to follow and the GPS log is available online) there's something to be said for competing with other people. Not that I'm all that fast and out to beat anyone, but my mindset completely changes when I'm running against people and not just with them. It's definitely a motivating factor to keep running hard and that in turn, for me at least, translates into staying in shape and working hard to get better and faster.
Oh, and for gear geeks out there: it was fairly chilly at the start of the race so I wore my compression sleeves (which I had bought just recently) which are great because a mile or so into the race I was warming up so I took them off and tucked them in my Nathan Race Belt that I was wearing. These compression sleeves are new to me and they're great because you don't have to stop and "delayer" as they just roll off like a glove. For shoes I wore my Inov-8 X-Talon 212's which were probably the most popular shoe on the Mt. Toby course yesterday. If only I could have had these shoes when I was running cross country during HS. Just sayin'.
-Dr. Wu
This was my first time running and actually, I didn't sign up until the night before. There was a nice, hilly 1/2 marathon in Munson MA that I was considering but I'm 100% happy that I did the Mt. Toby Race instead! I ended up running fairly well... my time was 2:02:43, about a ~9:30 pace on the way in and ~8:30 pace on the way out. It is a very fast course (winning time was 1:32!!) and I think that I can shave off a good amount of time for next years race. Despite the elevation gain, 100% of the course is actually very runnable. And you can really blow open the downhill parts, especially coming off the summit. This race ended up appealing to me because I was able to maintain a "race pace" the entire way. Obviously I went slow on the uphills (race pace for me on a 5k is about 6:15/mile) but the constant speeding up and slowing down to accommodate the ups and downs made things fairly interesting. I always felt like I was in that "race pace" zone which I might not have if it was a longer course.
Overall, this was a pretty great race and I hope that more cool races start popping up like this. As much as I love hiking and just going for runs on my own (this course was easy to follow and the GPS log is available online) there's something to be said for competing with other people. Not that I'm all that fast and out to beat anyone, but my mindset completely changes when I'm running against people and not just with them. It's definitely a motivating factor to keep running hard and that in turn, for me at least, translates into staying in shape and working hard to get better and faster.
Oh, and for gear geeks out there: it was fairly chilly at the start of the race so I wore my compression sleeves (which I had bought just recently) which are great because a mile or so into the race I was warming up so I took them off and tucked them in my Nathan Race Belt that I was wearing. These compression sleeves are new to me and they're great because you don't have to stop and "delayer" as they just roll off like a glove. For shoes I wore my Inov-8 X-Talon 212's which were probably the most popular shoe on the Mt. Toby course yesterday. If only I could have had these shoes when I was running cross country during HS. Just sayin'.
-Dr. Wu
