Race #4/17 Spring Superior Trail 25K

This weekend I ran my 4th trail series race in Lutsen, MN on the Superior Hiking Trail. This was the first time that I have ran this trail that far north. I decided to make a weekend of it and drove up Friday afternoon with a friend and met many other friends up there that evening. We started out with dinner, pre-race meeting and then a walk about a mile up the trail to check out the raging Poplar River and to get look at the trail conditions.

Me, Robyn, Stephanie and Mike

Poplar River

Poplar River

With the race starting at 7am for the 50k runners (Mike and Robyn) and us 25k runners at 9 am we called it an early night going to our rooms.

Woke Saturday morning earlier than I needed to so I went down to registration and watched the 50k runners start their race. The weather was great, the sun was shining and there were not many clouds in the sky.

Mystery Mountain (the first hill to climb)

Moose Mountain (the second hill to tackle)

After relaxing for about another hour I got ready for my race. It was hard deciding what to wear as always. I decided on full tights, calf compression sleeves, thick wool socks (expected to get very muddy and was not at all disappointed!), Short sleeves, thin running jacket, thin gloves, buff and my Nathan hydration pack. I packed my wind/rain jacket just in case the wind picked up and it got cold on the top. Ended up not using that jacket at all and peeled off the running jacket rather quickly.

Pre-race; Stephanie, Melissa, Janet, Nora and Shawn

Nora's friend, Shawn, planned on running the race in the hopes of finishing in 4 hours which was exactly what my goal was so we planned to run together. We left the others behind right away as we took off down the road to get onto the trail.

I felt great for all of this race, similar to running Chippewa. It was definitely great having someone to run with and we kept pace with each other fairly well. At one point we were in a train of runners with one runner ahead of Shawn setting the pace. This continued on for most of the way up Mystery Mountain and then across the top of Moose Mountain. Finally, while we were walking up a small hill I was ready to run again and the lead runner was walking so we found an opportunity to pass her up. We picked up the pace quite a bit and realized that it was possible her pace was just slight slower than we had wanted as we lost the group pretty quickly. We made one wrong turn coming off one hill and realized our mistake and was able to correct it quickly. At this point in the race we thought that it might be possible to come in sub 4 hrs and this became our new goal.

We got into the aid station at the turnaround and both decided that we would not spend any extra time there. I had my bladder refilled to the half way point grabbed a few peanut butter and jelly wedges, had some coke and was back out of the aid station in a matter of minutes.

Out of the aid station we had a steep climb up the Oberg hill which was very challenging. I was still doing well at this point and Shawn was starting to struggle. We stayed together for the most part but I started to pull ahead. He caught up again somewhere during one of the incline's but I soon passed him and then by mutual decision I pulled ahead as I was ready to move on at a quicker pace. According to my Garmin it looked like we would miss our sub 4 hour goal as our average pace was around 17 minutes instead of the 16 minutes we needed. I readjusted my goal to 4:15 and just powered on, power walking the major inclines and running the flats and downhills. My downhill running has improved and I am now less timid on the downhill's which is giving me quicker finishing times overall. (It turns out our Garmin's were not keeping accurate distance so this average pace was slower than our actual average pace.)

Walking up the very steep hills

We encountered lots of mud on the trail.

Awesome trail conditions on most of the trail.

There was still snow on the trail but not enough to really slow us down

Coming down off Mystery Mountain I was still feeling great and a friend told me that when I started hearing the roar of the Poplar River I would know that I only had about a mile left. After crossing the river there was still a little trail left and a small climb but all of a sudden I popped back out onto the gravel road and I knew I was getting close. I picked up my pace and was running sub 10 minute miles trying to speed up my finish. I was no longer paying attention to my time and just pushed myself trying to get under the 4:15. I crossed the finish line at 4:02:42 and was very shocked that I had made up so much more time than I had anticipated.

I am very pleased with how well this run went and after peering at the mountains in the distance pre-race and being told stories of how rough the climbs were I am thrilled that I finished this race so strong. I waited for Shawn at the finish line and he came in only about 6 minutes behind me. I will definitely have to run this race again and who knows maybe next year it will be the 50k instead!

The trails were very muddy in spots. Too busy navigating the ankle deep mud to get good pictures.