Greenland 25k Race report from Justin

Part way through the year I changed my plans of running ultras all year to competing in the shorter races. The first big race of my new schedule was the Greenland 25k. Last year I ran the 50k where I broke the course record and I wanted to go out see what I could do on the 25k. In the past few years they have had snow on the course which made for slower times. So this year Derek, the race director, move the race back a few weeks in hopes of getting better weather conditions. I thought this was a great idea until I showed up on Saturday and there were really strong winds. I felt that the conditions this year were tougher than last but in the future the new race date will give the runners a better chance for good conditions.
Saturday morning we drove up to the race which is about an hour and a half away. While on the way up I drank my usual bottle of EFS with a scoop of PreRace supplement by First Endurance. I really like the PreRace supplement because of the variety of stimulants that help increase your performance. I am not a coffee drinker so this really gets my system going and the great thing about the PreRace is you can add it to any drink. Once we arrived at the race, I did a quick 20 minute warm up with 15 minutes of stretching. I didn’t know what level of competition was going to be there but while I was warming up I saw a few guys that looked tough. While walking over to the start I decided to wear my Pearl Izumi arm warmers. I usually don’t like to wear anything besides the basics but it was just too cold. This made it easy after the first lap, once it got warmer, to take them off and hand them to my wife.

 

Once the race started I shot off the line and took the lead. This wasn’t the plan and I didn’t want to burn myself up while the other guys drafted so I slowed down and got in the back of a small select group. There was a total of seven of us including the top two in the 8 mile and the top 5 of the 25k. After the first mile or so I realized that I had forgotten to put on my race number. In all the years of racing I have never done that before but I guess there has to be a first for everything. I was having a really difficult time running in the back of the group because the leader fluctuated his speed too much. At some points I lost contact with the pack while others I was running into the guy in front of me. I was just trying to stay patient until the 3.5 mile point which was the first major uphill.

 

Once there I took off and within a minute or so I had already bridged a small 10 second lead. I really pushed hard the next two or so uphill miles and I built a small lead. Usually I wouldn’t try to take the lead on a hill being that it isn’t my strength. I really like to push the downhills because I usually have the stride advantage being that I am 6′2. This was the plan that my dad had come up with because he didn’t want to trash my quads going downhill with two big races coming in the next month or so. My dad has been coaching me again over the past few weeks. He coached me in early 2008 when I was having a lot of success. I quit having him coach me shortly after CP 25 last year, that was a big mistake but I think this coaching change will help keep me focused on this year’s goal. Being that I didn’t push the downhill too hard the group closed the gap a bit and Peter Vail even caught me right before the turn around. At the turn around I had about 30 seconds on the second group of Jason Saitta and Daryn Parker.

 

After Peter caught up we talked about working together over the next few miles to build a lead over the other two but shortly after the turn he was gone. I kept thinking that I should slow down so we could work together but I decided to start pushing the pace on the next small hill. I figured I had around :3o seconds on Peter and :45 on Jason after that short hilly section. The wind was making it tough to push the pace so I decided to slow down just a bit in order to save myself for the hill that I made my first move on. On that hill, I again pushed hard to the top and I believed that I had enough of a lead to take it to the finish. I was still a little worried because Peter had caught me on the last downhill so I pushed it for the first mile or so of the last downhill section. I finished in 1:36:27 a new course record by over 2 minutes. Peter was second, Jason third and Daryn ended up fourth. I didn’t realize how tough the competition was until talking with them at the end of the race. The top three including myself ran faster than the previous course record. I was really happy with the time and place. Derek always puts on a great race and who knows maybe I will have to go back next year and try for the 8 mile course record.