The Muddy Moose Trail Race , Sunday, April 25, 2004
This Race is listed in our trail race calendar.
Despite Ciolino's urgings to leave early, and everyone else's determination to ignore them, we arrived in Wolfeboro with plenty of time to shiver in the gym, analyze the course map, and drool over the ever-increasing stack of homemade baked goods in the corner.
The race went off at precisely 10:01 (a minute later than race director Fergus Cullan would have liked). It started on a packed dirt road and looked pretty tame, to be honest; we might have been a bit nervous if not for the assurances of veterans that the course was, in fact, very muddy. Team Gloucester was quickly separated, with Matt Curran out to race and Steve Whittey starting in his usual speedy fashion. We were running through the trails thinking our shoes weren't even wet yet when Whumph! We hit the mud in a big way. Some pranced around the edges in a futile attempt to stay clean and pretty, while others charged right through. Charging through seemed the way to go, except for the times when it wasn't-- such as when Jenn Brooks Lassen, frustrated with the tippy-toe crowd, went for broke only to find herself waist-deep in muck.
After a couple of miles of slathering through several flavors of mud, the course was looking like it could get pretty darn tiring, so much so that the dirt road was almost a welcome sight. Team Gloucester regrouped a bit here, with Bob Gillis running with Brooks for a ways before pulling ahead, and Rick Ciolino right behind. Whittey was still out running with the gazelles, and Curran was alternating leads with Dave Dunham.
After the dirt road came the escarpment trail, a nice single track climb with a name that put a sparkle in everyone's eyes. Up the cliff, along the ridge, and back to atv/snowmobile trails, with one screaming downhill and a long gradual uphill before the Beaver Dam loop. Not a lot to say about this stretch-- Brooks went by Whittey, who looked strong, and began to close the gap on Gillis. Gillis might not have been such an easy target had he been wearing a Team Gloucester shirt in place of his blaze-yellow apparel.
The Beaver Dam loop was a truly fun addition to the course. Not because of the shoe-suckingly deep and utterly unavoidable mud pits, or because of the short but steep climbs and descents, but because the fact that you could run it in either direction confused the heck out of people. Curran and Dunham, still together, were coming out of the loop shortly before Brooks and Gillis were heading in. Brooks went the opposite direction of most and was able to sneak by Gillis (who admittedly lost some time looking bewildered while he tried to figure out why people he'd passed were now running towards him). Ciolino gained some ground on Whittey, but Whittey was able to hold his own.
Brooks came out of the loop just ahead of Tom Parker from Nashua, who would continue to sit right behind her for the next several miles of trail. Gillis was next, then Whittey, Ciolino, and Dave Geary. Curran was now well ahead of the pack and out of sight.
The last few miles of the course were brutal: first a long stretch of dirt road, which every trail runner knows gets monotonous late in a race, followed by a long stretch of by now well-churned slop-- both Brooks and Ciolino avoided spectacular falls on this stretch by the narrowest of margins. While there were no major falls here or on the steep escarpment trail, where one would expect a spill or two, Brooks was felled in a dry-stretch by a vicious 1/2" twig. After the mile-ish long mud pit came a stretch of (are you ready for this?) paved uphill before the finish. Running through mud is okay. Running uphill on a road is even okay. But there is simply no dignity in trying to run uphill on asphalt when one's shoes are filled with approximately 6.7 lbs of mud each.
However, finishes tend to be exciting with Team Gloucester, and despite the final quagmire this year was no exception. Curran was the top Gloucester runner, coming in eighth overall in 1:43:45. (Dunham finished two spots ahead in 1:40:27; the race was won by Kevin Tilton, of Conway, NH, in 1:30:20). Brooks was passed by Parker on the final uphill, but a surge over the last 100 meters put her once again in front, finishing first woman and fifteenth overall in 1:51:07. Parker was sixteenth in 1:51:13. A bespattered Gillis was the next Team Gloucester runner, coming in twenty-third in 1:54:46.
Whittey was the next to appear on the horizon, with Ciolino sprinting hot on his heels. "Like a tiger chasing a wildebeest," remarked Gillis. Ciolino pulled ahead with twenty-five meters to go, but then relaxed--only to have Whittey find another gear and out-lean him at the finish. Both ran 1:57:40, with Whittey twenty-eighth overall and Ciolino twenty-ninth. "The fun is in the competition, " said Ciolino, "It doesn't matter who actually winds up first." I think we all know how much truth lies in that statement,
After Ciolino came through we stopped to look around; we were a bit concerned when we couldn't find Curran, until we remembered the aforementioned pile of cookies, brownies, and muffins to be had at the gym. Sure enough there he was, looking jubilantly happy with his stack of sweets. We put on sweats, grabbed some grub, went to the finish, put on more layers, and finally began to wonder if Geary had: 1) tripped and fallen, 2) gotten lost, or 3) been toppled by an angry moose. He finally came through in 2:25:55, after making a wrong turn and adding on an additional two miles of trail. He's claiming it was accidental, but we all know about Geary's propensity for secret training. One has to wonder.
After that it was time to clean off (clean being a relative term), find some food, (which a dehydrated Brooks valiantly managed to keep down, despite looking fairly green the entire ride home), and call it a day.
Overall the race was a hit-- it was well organized, the shirts were great, they put aside food for the 14 milers, and the course had a little bit of everything. It was definitely worth the trip, and we'll be back next year.
