Fruitlands

On Sunday I ran in the USATF-NE 10-Mile championship, held on a hilly course in Harvard, MA. The race had its start and finish near the Fruitlands Museum, a scattering of buildings that commemorates the founding of a transcendentalist commune in 1844 by Amos Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott) and Charles Lane.

The race began in a drizzle that gradually became a steady, if gentle, rain. The rain didn't bother me at all, but I had some anxiety about racing 10 miles, since I haven't been running a lot of miles in training lately and didn't feel quite ready to tackle what will almost certainly be my longest race of the year. I decided I would play it very cool, go out very easy, and save something for the hills later in the race.

As the crowd of runners surged forward with the firing of the gun, I tried to relax and focus all my attention on running efficiently, ignoring as best I could the instinct to chase every other runner who passed by. As the first half mile was downhill, it was hard to hold back. One mile went by in 5:45 and there were maybe a hundred runners in front of me. Two miles in 11:33 and now I was in a comfortable rhythm, not pushing too hard, but starting to improve my position a bit. As I would come up alongside someone who had gone out faster, I would exchange a few words (if I knew the person) and move on, certain I wouldn't see them again until after the finish. Mile three featured the first real uphill, and I was happy to find that I rolled right over it without a lot of straining. As I continued on, trying to judge my pace, I found myself running alone. I had passed the easy targets and they were back there somewhere, but the next pack of runners was way ahead -- maybe 25-30 seconds. I settled myself in for a long chase.

When I passed four miles in 23:33, I felt that I had let the pace drag too much. I was feeling fine, and knew that no matter what kind of climbs were ahead, I wasn't going to crash and burn. The next mile had a long gradual downhill, so I tried to focus on turnover and make up some of the distance to the stragglers who were being spit out by the pack ahead of me. Just before we hit halfway, we climbed another short, fairly steep uphill and I caught a couple more people. I reached halfway in 29:24 -- 5:53 pace, and I found myself thinking, I feel too good.

Mile six was uneventful. Mile seven we went up another hill and I passed another two-three more people. In front of me, I could see the top two women who were running shoulder to shoulder about 10 seconds in front of me. I figured I had a good chance to catch them, and a short climb just before we passed Bromfield High School at about the 8-mile mark gave me my opportunity. At this point, I knew that uphills were my allies -- the steeper the better -- and I was glad for all the hill repeats my running buddy Terry and I had run up Comm Ave for the past five weeks. (Terry was about a minute in front of me at this point).

I went by the lead women and saw a lot of empty road ahead. But I knew from my warm-up before the race that the last mile climbed about 150 feet before a short downhill finish. I felt I could get one more place, and I tried to gauge my effort to accomplish that goal. At this point, the course turned off the main road and ascended a short and nasty little hill that stole away momentum and -- for the first time in the race -- made me aware that I was hurting. I tried to focus on turnover, efficiency, not over-striding. As the road leveled out, I told myself there was one more hill to go.

I had jogged the last part of the course before the race and I figured that once you had crested the last hill, there was maybe a minute and a half of hard running on a slight downhill before the finish. This was useful to know, because the uphill curved around in such a way that you couldn't actually see where you were relative to the end until the very top. So that was where I made a last push, using my weary but Heartbreak-Hill-trained legs to catch one last guy, got a little gap on him and then held on for dear life in the final downhill.

I finished in 58:37, not a spectacular time, but not bad considering my pre-race concerns about fitness. But then I realized that I had run negative splits: 29:24/29:13, even though the course dropped 100 feet in the first five miles, and climbed back up in the second half of the race. It had felt too easy, and now I knew why: it HAD been too easy! I had never actually been able to make up for my relatively slow start, although I had certainly saved myself a great deal of pain and suffering by being conservative. Ah well, it had been fun. Maybe it hadn't been perfect, but it would do.

After the race, as the rain came down, I talked with my friend Sumner about Fruitlands and the "experiment" that it represented. The residents of the Fruitlands commune had wanted to support themselves in what they believed would be an earthly paradise, without "corrupting" themselves or the land. They were vegetarians, eschewing even milk and eggs. They didn't know the first thing about farming. They were much fonder of discoursing on philosophical topics than actually working the land. Not surprisingly, the commune failed within six months.

Perhaps I, too, had just wanted the whole enterprise to be easier than such things generally are.

Read "Transcendentalist Wild Oats" - Louisa May Alcott's satirical reminiscence on the Fruitlands experiment.