The Assault on Pine Mountain is a new 9 (8’ish actually)
mile trail race north of Atlanta close to Red Top Mountain State Park. The race has two significant climbs and
descents starting at miles 3 and 5.
Shorter trail races are tough for me since speedsters, typically young
ones, can show up and blaze the trail. I was hoping that the two rather big switchback-laden
climbs in this one and the technical single track throughout could work to my
advantage.
The race started well, as I quickly worked to stay with the
leaders. The guy wearing the
Vibram five-fingers fell off about half way through the first climb. So then I was left with two of the
aforementioned speedsters who appeared to be friends from Jacksonville (based
on their singlets). They
were strong on the climbs and even faster on the descents. At the top of the first climb one of
them was well in front and out of site.
At the bottom of the first descent, they were both out of site. I kept plugging along and managed to
catch them about halfway up the second climb. The first guy ended up taking a wrong turn on the loop that
we were on and eventually met us head on and turned around with us. All three of us were together
again.
After a hard consistent pull up the second climb, I came out
of the water station at the top in first place and started into the
descent. Three miles to go. I had not managed to shake them on
the climb and I knew they were faster descenders than I. So I did the only thing I
could think of…run as fast as I could.
I quickly figured out that one of the guys was upset about getting lost
and fell back. So I ran with the
other speedy guy hot on my heels, eating up the rooty, rocky single track as we
went. I offered to let him go by
but he declined.
After a short but steep uphill section, we finally came to
the downhill gravel road that would lead us the remaining 600 yards to the
finish. At that point, the speedy
guy came around and started sprinting downhill. I tried with everything I had to keep up, but I just
couldn’t turn my legs over fast enough.
I was still within about 20 feet at about 300 yards to go but all of the
sudden I tripped since I was to travelling at a speed that I had no business
at. I laid out superman-style in
the air and came to a skid like an airplane missing it’s landing gear. I immediately jumped up and asked the
camerawoman well positioned about 15 feet in front of me if she got a shot of
that as I ran by her. Unfortunately
she missed the best shot she would have had all day. I sprinted in happy with a second place finish. It was a certainly a fun battle. I was particularly impressed that
the winner had never run a trail race before and was from pancake flat Florida.
The rest of the day was pretty much perfect. I capped it off with a great day of
college football on TV with the family (Tennessee won! Auburn won! Georgia Tech
won!) and rocking out with the Black Lips at a truck stop dive bar till
2AM. Plenty of celebratory beers
were downed throughout the day.
Seriously, could it get any better?
