ENTRY #2
These past few weeks have been quite busy in running terms. I first watched an ultra marathon, or fifty kilometer race, in the middle of July. The Great Cranberry Island Ultra is an unique race on an interesting island. The only main road on the island is about 2 miles long which goes from one side of the island to the other. So, to reach fifty kilometers, the runners must run roughly eight laps. That is a lot of running. Around 120 runners ran the race this year, which is about four times the year round population of the island, an interesting fact. During the race I was a last minute volunteer, but since everything was previously organized and set up with assigned roles, I was basically useless. So, I enjoyed just watching the runners run back and forth. The winning time was 3:41:21 run by David Holder from Canada. And the fastest female was several minutes over four hours.
The following day I headed over to MDI to go to the Acadian Running Camp for three nights. Those four days included a lot of good, hard running. What I especially enjoyed about those several days was I got to know some runners quite well. It is always nice to know competitors at a different, more friendly level.
Four days after the first running camp ended I traveled the five hour drive to Lyndonville, Vermont for Green Mountain Running Camp. Last year a couple teammates and I went for the first time, and had a blast; it was my favorite week of the entire year. A lot of people think I am crazy to declare that my favorite week. But, this year I got even more of my teammates to come along. At this camp there were over 200 runners, and in contrast to ARC where we were all Maine runners, only six were from Maine. I’d say the majority of the runners were from New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania area. The seven days were filled with many runs (early morning and afternoon), running classes, speakers and of course fun recreation. The speakers this year were quite inspirational, including a talk by Marcus O’Sullivan, former Olympian. The last afternoon run on Friday was the hardest run of the week, the graduation run. This run is hard because it is all uphill for several miles. When the first year campers hear that they got all psyched out and worried, as I probably did my first year too. Throughout the week, the eighteen groups are put to run at many different locations. So, what was great about this run was that all eighteen groups ran this same point to point run. When I finished, a mob of runners was already starting to form in a field, and by the time everyone was finished, it was more of a crowd of either overly tired runners or overly enthusiastic runners who couldn’t believe they survived the run. All in all, it was a great way to finish the week at running camp.
I find that the running camp training is almost perfect to my schedule with a race in one week. But, even though running camp and camp runs only lasted four days and then later seven days, I try to take the new knowledge and make that last longer especially with the cross country preseason starting next week.
More Information
