 Batten Kill Valley Runners |
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Conditions were just about perfect for the annual Pisgah Forest races in mid-September: cool, dry, overcast, and windless… Four BKVR members made the trip to West Chesterfield, NH (just across the river from Brattleboro). Bruce Piispanen ran the 50K while Ron Houser, Laurie Lambert and I ran the 23K. The races started simultaneously at 8:45 and as we ran along the forest entrance road I could see Ron moving easily in third place and Laurie just behind him holding the number one spot in the women's race. Five minutes later, on a steep hill, Bruce padded by me, moving at the steady pace he would hold for the next five hours, thirty-one minutes and 30 seconds on the 31 mile course his race would follow. In another mile the routes split, and Bruce was gone for the day. Ron and Laurie, of course, were also out of sight, running in the front of the pack on steep single track through rock, swamp, and brush so thick that it would be easy to imagine that the first settlers here in the 1600s shied away from farming it, leaving it as God's little acre, although it's really more like 3500 acres.
My personal plans were simple: beat last year's time and avoid falling down, but as Scots poet Bobby Burns observed, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray." Three falls later, I crossed the finish line three minutes behind last year's time, to find that after Ron's great start he had pulled a muscle and walked the last six miles. And Laurie? Well, she led until about mile twelve where the trail followed both arms of a Y and Laurie ran down the unmarked stem, still leading, but with no one following. By the time she figured it out and backtracked, three other women had passed her so she finished a disappointing fourth. Bruce's race was up to his expectations: he finished 23rd, and took 44 minutes off last year's time. Not bad for a guy who was just warming up for the Vermont 50 on October 1st!
by Jack Quinn
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