Unless you've been living under a rock for the last month, you are aware that COVID-19 has pretty much shut down the entire earth, meaning that races are cancelled indefinitely. Thankfully for the running community, companies like Spring Energy have stepped up to create virtual challenges for those of us who need some external motivation.
In mid-March, Spring announced their Vert Is Real challenge, a virtual competition to rack up as much vertical gain as possible in a single activity. Seeing as hill repeats feature prominently in my training, I figured a long hill session - say 20,000 feet of climbing - would put me near the top of the leader board. That wouldn't be my best ever total, but I wasn't willing to spend 48 hours racking up elevation gain again.
The Route
In keeping with the social distancing spirit of the event, I needed to find a route that was close to home, lightly trafficked, and had a lot of elevation change per mile. Thankfully my local hill fit the bill perfectly. Packing 685' of gain into a 1.31 mi out and back, this climb up Cushetunk Mountian was just about perfect. In fact, I have used it so often in training that I created a Strava segment for it.
On clear sunny days, this trail sees a good amount of hikers who come out for a view of Round Valley Reservoir. I found myself hoping for some rain to keep the trails clear, and thankfully that's exactly what happened.
The "Race"
Usually in race reports, I focus on the people I met or the interesting parts of the course. Unfortunately, there was really none of that. This is the view that I had most of the day:
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| Gray skies and a brown forest |
And the only person I talked to was my wife when she came out to hike a "lap" with me.
While that probably sounds pretty dull, it actually became meditative after a while. I just focused on my breathing, made sure to eat once in a while, and churned out 25 minute laps like clockwork.
As rain showers passed through, the moss and shrubs took on that fluorescent green color, which in my mind signifies that they're pretty happy with life. Squirrels rustled around in the brush just out of sight as I huffed my way up each climb, and a Pileated woodpecker headbutted its way into a dead tree next to the trail.
One by one I checked off each of the 30 laps required to get me to my goal of 20,000 feet. Every 5,000 feet or so, I had an Ensure and a swig of coffee from my mug (which thankfully was still pretty warm at the end of the day). My reward to myself for hitting 10,000 feet was to text some friends.
After almost 13 hours, I reached the end of my journey.
Final Stats
39.53 miles
20,552 feet
12:55:17 elapsed
This would turn out to be good enough for 10th place, which juuuust made me eligible for a sweet 20% off code for Spring products (race winners got store credit). But more importantly, it resulted in a ridiculous looking elevation profile on Strava that I can look at whenever I need a reminder that I'm not right in the head.
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| So I got that going for me, which is nice. |
Future Plans
Unfortunately, NJ state parks closed down shortly after this event, so my trail running will probably be on hold for a while.
However, I did manage to run a 19 hour virtual timed event two weeks later, so stay tuned for that report.
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