Blue Hills 10 mile Trail Race Report - Ben Nephew

As always a good read from Ben Nephew on his 2nd OA placing in 1:01:34 at the popular Blue Hills 10 mile Trail Race just outside of Boston on the Skyline Trail in Blue Hills State Park.

Blue Hills 10m Trail Race

4/25/10

I’ve been trying to run this race for a few years, but couldn’t manage to register prior to the closing of the registration. The 10 and 3 mile have a combined race capacity of 250, which tends to fill up fast, possibly since the race is just minutes south of downtown Boston. This year, the race closed out a full month prior to race day. The Blue Hills state park is known for the Skyline Trail, a rugged singletrack that reduces you to a crawl, but there are dozens of other trails in the park that are great for running. The course laid out by the Colonial Road Runners is a good mix of carriage road, technical singletrack, and plenty of hills. I actually ran the course on Saturday to familiarize myself with the many turns and intersections. Although I wasn’t running hard, I was a little disturbed that it took me 72 minutes to run. I didn’t think I’d be able to do much better than 63-64 minutes for the race.

I saw a few of the regular New England trail racers, but also many new runners, so I wasn’t really sure who I was going to be racing. After my preview, I decided to hold back a little in the first few miles, as there is a lot of climbing between miles 5-7. Everyone let me lead up the first gradual hill off the start, and things started to spread out quickly once we ran about a half mile. One guy in long socks and black shorts and shirt stayed right off my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to try and pull away so early in the race. We passed the mile in about 5:50, and he slowly pulled into the lead. He didn’t sustain the faster pace, and I held my place a few seconds behind up the gradual hill in mile two. The second mile was still under 6 minute pace even with the hill slowing us down. As we turned to start the hills of the third mile, we were about 10 seconds ahead of David Woodruff in third.

The third mile has a small hill, then a medium sized hill, and finally a rather large hill topped by about 400 meters of ankle-snapping singletrack. The leader was quite strong on each hill, and it was then that I realized it would be a long day. He put a few more seconds on me as I completed that mile in 7:50, which was about 90 faster than I ran it the day before. Not only was he strong on the hills, he had no problems with the rocky singletrack at the top. Maybe he had issues with downhills.

One of the most difficult downhills on the course is right after the third mile marker, and he didn’t seem to struggle much on that descent. He probably ran it faster than me, as my legs were already heavy from my efforts on the previous uphills. I was running out of options. Miles 3-5 were rolling and runable, concluding with a big downhill to the start of the sixth mile. I managed to claw back to within about five seconds of the leader during this runable stretch, and I was really pleased with the way my new Mudroc 290’s felt on this section. I had debated on running in the 230’s, which tend to be faster over less technical terrain, and I was worried that the 290’s were going to cost me time on the carriage roads.
I knew that the long hill right at 5 miles was my best chance to get into the lead, but the best I could do was damage control. I lost about 10 seconds by mile 6, and was not looking forward the steep hill leading to mile 7. I passed Steph and Gavin during this stretch, and was surprised to hear that they thought I looked better at that point. If I would have felt better, I would not have been behind at that point, but at least I was making the leader work for it!

I lost contact somewhere around mile 8, but was able to claw back to within 20 seconds or so on the half mile gradual uphill leading to final mile as the leader was regularly looking back to check on my progress. The final mile is very fast, with one small rise that I had a surprising amount of trouble with. My quads were done, and although I felt like I finished strongly, I ended up 32 seconds behind at the finish, in 1:01:34. Michael Norton ended up moving into 3rd place with his 1:05:31. I was surprised we ended up running that fast given the difficulty of course, and couldn’t really think of anything I could have done differently to change the results. The 290’s felt great throughout the race, and I may wear them for faster races in the future. The incredible traction and protective forefoot were appreciated over the rocks and roots exposed by all the recent rains.

After the race, I discovered that winner was David Le Porho, who is actually from Montreal and was down visiting some friends. In March, David ran a 1:11 at the NYC half marathon, which is similar to the time Kevin Tilton ran in New Bedford before beating me by 10 seconds at the Merrimack River 10 mile. Apparently I’m slightly slower than 1:11 half guys at trail races, which is a very poor predictor of my (lack of) road running ability! David will be running one of the races at the Ultimate XC race up at Mont Tremblant later this summer, and I gave him some shoe advice (with Gavin’s help) after he asked about some of the Inov-8 racing models. I didn’t offer any racing advice, as he seemed to have a good handle on that.

John Goldrosen and the Colonial Road Runner did an excellent job marking the course and providing water along the way. If this race gets any better, it’ll close out before the Boston Marathon!