Highs and Lows in Rochester

Last weekend I travelled with my GBTC team-mates to Rochester, NY, for the National Club Cross Country Championships. Teams from around the country travelled to converge on Genesee Valley Park for a day of racing where the focus is on team scoring rather than individual performances. For us Greater Bostonians, it was a 7 hour road trip along I-90 to get there (plus, in some cases, an extra hour or so of fruitless driving around Rochester trying to find the entrance to the park.)

As my earlier post on clichés of running music would indicate, one of my first concerns was the choice of music by the DJ on race day. When we arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to find that we appeared to be in a cliché-free zone - the first song I recognized was Gretchen Wilson's Redneck Woman. While I'm not a huge country music fan, self-parody is hard not to like. As the nameless reviewer on Amazon said, Wilson "isn't just putting the trailer park back into country music, she's the antidote to Shania and Faith." High praise indeed. And full marks to the DJ for picking a song I had never before heard played at a running event.

All continued smoothly during my warm-up. Shortly before the start of the race, I noticed that they were playing The Beatles' When I'm Sixty-Four - arguably an appropriate song as the old men were warming up to race. But as soon as the gun was fired for my race (the masters 10k), everything went pear-shaped. The DJ, perhaps acting on a tip-off from one of my running rivals, cued up Chariots of Fire. I did my best to channel my anger into running faster, with the result that I passed the 2k mark in 6:43, a good 17 seconds faster than I had intended. From then on I didn't hear too much music during the race, and mostly if I heard anything it was the cheering of my team-mates (note to other masters runners: it really pays to join a team with a lot of younger runners who can cheer for you). I also was able to keep tabs on the progress of the leaders, as their splits were announced almost every kilometer - and thankfully I was never more than 1k behind them. I heard the names of former Olympian John Tuttle and top master Brian Pope. I was hoping Pope would manage to win - he is pictured here alongside me just before he took first place (and I took last) in the masters mile at January's Reebok Boston Indoor games.

In the end Tuttle took 3rd and Pope 4th. All in all the race went pretty well from my perspective, and I was quite happy with my 35:39 finishing time and 50th place. But as soon as I crossed the finish line, my relief at having finished was overwhelmed by the sorry sound of Rocky blaring out from the speakers. I must have been blocking it out during my final sprint, but no wonder I couldn't catch those last couple of guys at the finish line. I had to wonder if I somehow missed Eye of the Tiger.

That's me in the red, 2nd from the left, and the expression on my face tells you what I'm thinking about the music.

More on the other races later.