Nephew Breaks Tape at Hallockville Pond SSR.

Congratulations to Ben Nephew on another impressive snowshoe race at Hallockville Pond. Yet again an impressive battle against some of the east's toughest. Read more..

Hallockville Pond 5.6 mile Snowshoe Race

On February 8th I took another trip out to western MA for a relatively long snowshoe race. Most of the races this year have been right around 4 miles, so it would be interesting to see what happened beyond that point in this race. There was a solid field, with Matt Cartier, who chased me all the way in at Curley's 4 miler earlier in the season, Dave Dunham, who just beat at Northfield, and Tim Mahoney, who has been in the top 3 of several races this year.

Based on my experience at Northfield, I was content to sit back for at least the first mile. The course had about 700’ of climbing, with two large climbs right in the middle of the race. About a minute into the race, I realized that I wasn’t really choosing to hang back. Tim just took off, and Dave, Matt, and I were trying hard to keep him close. The snow wasn’t all the fast, but we went through the rolling first mile in a little over 7 minutes, with Tim still pushing the pace. On the downhill sections were we running 6:00 pace. On the large hill at 2 miles, I pulled right in back of Dunham, but neither of us caught Tim. Dave ended up going into a brook right around the turn around, and apparently we were all distracted by the water hazard. I knew that the race had a small loop at the halfway point, and as we started down a long hill, I worried that we were too far from the out and back section. I yelled at Tim and Dave a few seconds later, and we all turned around to catch Matt heading up from the brook.

I was now in the lead, but was tentative about pushing too hard too early. Dave tried to catch me on the last large uphill just past 3.5 miles, but I was able to hold onto a slim lead. I do have to note that Dave had raced the day before, and I had not. Knowing this, I was really hoping he would just drop off towards the end due to fatigue. Despite trying to increase the pace over the last 2 miles, I couldn’t get more than a few seconds on Dave. In addition to worrying about Dave catching me, I wasn’t sure that I was in first place. It was possible that someone could have passed us while we were sightseeing off the course.

Those last two miles seemed to go on forever. I must have looked back to check on Dave over a dozen times. I don’t know who believes that looking back is poor race tactics, but I think it is crazy not to. People say that looking back gives your opponent energy; I don’t know about that. Unless I’m throwing some crystal meth back when I check on who is chasing me, I’m not sure where this energy is coming from. Even if I acknowledge that looking back confirms that I am tired, I find that the sight of someone reeling me in instills a fear similar to being chased by someone with a knife. If I’m behind, I don’t care if someone looks back or not, I’m going to try to chase them down either way. Hell, I was in Atlanta for the Olympic 10k, and Tergat and Geb were checking each other out on the big screens the entire race. Apparently, Geb thinks those screens are similar to side view mirrors, because he kept turning around to confirm what he was seeing on the screens! So, my advice on looking back during races is: Look back all you want, just don’t be tossing any stimulants to your competitors!

Dave chased me right to the line, and was only 7 seconds back. Matt tried to help Tim stick with us in the second half, but after his fast first half we put about 50 seconds on him over the last 2.8 miles. Matt, who was fighting the nasty cold that is going around this winter, was another 40 seconds back. Dave figures that the three of lost about 1:30 on our detour, so we were lucky that no one passed us. It’s always nice ending up with a win after that much hard running. I drove home to spend the rest of the weekend with Steph, who makes it possible for me to go to races by watching our little runner in training, Gavin.