Week #7 Recap

FLRC Challenge
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It’s been a busy week in the FLRC Challenge! In case you missed the announcement, we all now have three more courses to choose from. I opened the 6-mile Danby Down & Dirty course, the 5-mile Tortoise & Hare course (thanks to Mickie Sanders-Jauquet for leading a group run on the Tortoise course on Saturday the 17th), and the 8.5-mile Thom B. Trail Run course. We’ll get more accurate distances as more people get out on them. I plan to open Forest Frolic sometime this weekend too.

First Mud awards go to Bob Talda for Tortoise & Hare, to Bob Walters and Gabrielle Woo for Danby Down & Dirty, and to Caitlin and Jamie Loehr for hiking Thom B., with honorable mention to Ana Riley and Steve Desmond for other first-day Thom B. runs. Don’t miss the gory details of Steve’s wardrobe malfunction.

Huge props to Heather Cobb this week for taking on last week’s quad dare and putting together a single run that encompassed four Challenge courses: Waterfront Trail, Black Diamond Trail, South Hill Rec Way, and East Hill Rec Way! At some point, this will become impossible, but is anyone up for a fiver? Which clearly needs a good pseudo-German name like Fünfenlaufen. Or, even crazier, what about Gabrielle Woo’s idea of completing all ten courses in one week?

All those runs mean that Heather is also nipping at Pete Kresock’s heels in the overall Most Miles competition, with Aaron King not far behind in third. Other overall standings are in flux right now, thanks to all the new courses, but that will settle down soon enough.

Also last week, Jullien Flynn took back her top spot on the East Hill Rec Way with a commanding 5:36 mile and held onto her lead at the Waterfront Trail even as Liz Hartman got some pacing help (a totally legit strategy!) to lay down a 20:50 5K for second place.

A big leaderboard welcome to Makoto Endo and Ezbon Jacob—if you’re registered but haven’t yet hit a course yet, now’s the time to get out there. And if you’re not registered yet, will you join our game?

The FLRC Kids Challenge has its second group kick-off run Saturday at 1 PM at the Cornell Botanic Gardens. Run with your kids and notch Challenge efforts during family time. Over 40 kids are participating, and in the first week alone, they’ve run over 110 miles.

Finally, some admin messages.

  • The Department of Data Quality has noticed a few manual time submissions for the wrong course, resulting in wacky times that need fixing. Please be careful to choose the right course and enter your time correctly. It’s worth checking your page on the leaderboard to make sure everything is right.

  • To make looking at your page more interesting, we’ve added more data about your performance on each course, as you can see on my page.

  • To keep the teams competitive and make sure everyone feels included, we’re merging the teens into the 20-29 team and the 70+ into the 60-69 team.

Until next week then, enjoy getting out on the new FLRC Challenge trail courses!

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It seems that all courses together basically become an FLRC challenge 100K. I bet there are several who would go for that in a week.

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Shhh, wait for next week. I can’t spill all the beans at once. :slight_smile:

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Haha…you just hinted so hard this time I couldn’t resist!

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And a late-in-the-day shout-out to @heathercobb3, who just snuck into the lead for Most Miles by a mere half mile. Heather is not one of the faster runners in the FLRC Challenge, so her mileage is a testament to all the time she’s putting in.

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Heather said:

I’ve never been in the top on leaderboards for anything ever, so I’m trying like hell to hang on.

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Thank you, Adam! I am a proud back-back-of-the-packer, I’ve finished DFL more than I haven’t, and the two times I placed in my age group during a race is because there were only two of us (and one of those times I was overall DFL!). :laughing:

I won’t participate in virtual challenges based solely around speed because there is no way I can even compete with most runners out there. But the thing I love about this challenge is that there are so many ways to participate and possibly win - speed, most efforts, mileage. If you’re a slow runner or a walker, you could come up and take a top spot for the most mileage by the end of this thing. Whatever your running abilities are, you can be acknowledged for them.

Seeing myself on a leaderboard like this when I’ve never even come close before is so awesome. I feel seen and validated as a runner, and I appreciate Adam’s thoughtfulness in keeping this challenge accessible to nearly everyone.

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It should also be noted that @gplwoo’s T&H+D&D morning double has pushed the newly-minted 1-29 team into a tie for the overall points lead, taking the longstanding lead from us dirty 30s.

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@Petorius seriously upped the ante in Most Miles on Sunday with THREE efforts on the Black Diamond Trail for a whopping 30 miles. Were they all consecutive, Pete?

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Long story short, I took a crack at breaking 4 hours for 50k. My route was 3 runs of the BDT Challenge course with a final mile on the Waterfront path. (Since there’s no certified 50k course in Ithaca, I ran until my watch read 31.00.) I thought I had the fitness to do it and yesterday was the last chance I’d have for awhile, since I don’t want to run much on roads or track now that the trails are dry.

I was on pace for the sub-4 until I crashed hard on the third and final uphill at mile 24. I knew then that I wouldn’t make my goal, so I slowed down enough to make my “B goal” of sub-4:08. (8-minute average pace for the distance.) I think doing this on the flatter Waterfront Trail (like I did back in January) might have been easier, but I chose the BDT to avoid the wind, large crowds at the parks, road crossings, and the Stewart suspension bridges. The rain was a non-factor and actually felt good in the second half. I’m happy with running 4:07:20 for the distance, which is 10 minutes faster than my solo run in January and way faster than I’ve run 50k in any real race.

I’m going to write a blog post about the training and the run itself and I’ll link to it here when it’s done. And yes, it happened 'cuz Strava says it did. 31.0 mi Run Activity on April 11, 2021 by Pete K. on Strava

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Nice! I saw the 3x back-to-back and assumed you went the extra mile for a full 50K.

On that note, Des Linden is going for the 50K world record solo tomorrow in her ultra debut: https://twitter.com/brooksrunning/status/1379844145901146116

Unfortunately, since it’s in the middle of nowhere, it won’t be broadcast live anywhere, but you can follow her manager/agent Josh Cox for the most up-to-date updates: https://twitter.com/JoshCox/status/1381663761480622087

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Great run - congrats, Pete!

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As promised, I wrote a recap of my recent 50k time trial on my blog. Check it out if you’re interested in details about the training and the run itself aide from what I already mentioned in this thread. The Long and Winding Trail: A Personal Best 50k Time Trial Thanks for reading!

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Strong effort and a great writeup. Seems a little odd that you fell apart at 24 miles but were able to run again normally even the next day—maybe some sort of odd fueling issue? Good luck on the Hyner View Trail Challenge!

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@adamengst I think you misread it. I didn’t run the day after. On day 2 I did an easy run at Hammond, and by day 3 I felt 100% recovered.

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Heh—reading too fast. Still, after I ran the New York Marathon, I could barely walk for two weeks, much less run normally a few days later. :slight_smile: