Race #17/17 The Great Pumpkin Chase 10k

This was the last and final race in the Upper Midwest Trail Runners Association Trail series. This was my 17th race completed in the series. If you have been following my race reports you will see the first one started with Zumbro 17 mile in mid April and ended on October 25th with this nice and easy distance of a 10k trail race in Lake Elmo Park Reserve.

I arrived at the race early for packet pickup. One nice thing about fall races is that they start later in the morning so I can get more sleep! The weather was nice with no rain. This fall has turned out to have some really good weather on race days for me.

We gathered UMTR members and took our trail series race group photo. Smaller turnout at the race than some of the larger races but still a good representation of members. I am sure there were other members that were not in the picture.

Janet, Stephanie, Mike, Rick and Nora

Our course was to be two loops of the cross country ski trails. The second loop was actually a reverse of the first loop which was nice as we were able to see other runners, both in front of and behind us.

I really had no goals for this race but to run it at my best pace of the day. With 17 races this spring/summer/fall I did not want to push myself too hard. I was able to maintain a good overall pace for a  trail. There were very few hills and they were more like rolling hills. After having run this course I would like to come back to do some classical cross county skiing on it this winter. I did walk some of the steeper hills but ran the majority of this race.

The finish was a nice downhill sprint to the end. Much better than an uphill finish! Being the last race of the series I found myself thinking too much about how many miles I had left to go. Knowing that this finished my goal of "Shooting the Moon" I found myself counting down the miles to completing that goal. As Mike mentioned sometimes running these shorter races seems harder than a 50k race. I can agree with this as it takes my body a good 3 - 4 miles to really warm up and by then the race is just about over! I also run at a much faster pace in the shorter races as is to be expected.

Down one more hill and it is done!

Sprinting to the finish line. Well it felt like a sprint to me!

Finished!

Waiting for Nora to come in. Happy to have accomplished my goal for the season!

Traditional Nora and Janet picture at trail series races.

Even though I set out with no goals for this race I managed to set a new 10k PR. My finishing time was 1:04:50. My previous PR for a 10k road race was 1:06:39 set in October 2012 which was actually my second 10k race.