The second race of the PA (Pacific Association) USATF cross-country circuit is the Phil Widener Empire Open up in Santa Rosa, a good 100+ miles from me down in the south bay. The 3.4 mile race is one that I’ve never really been much interested in attending simply due to the fact that I’d be dropping 4 hours’ worth of driving in one day to run 3.4 miles. Plus, as was the case this time around, the EO XC meet is often the same weekend (albeit on Saturday) as the Santa Rosa Marathon, and running a XC race the day before I’d be (potentially) pacing a marathon seems unwise, if not borderline irresponsible. 

Well, given that I wasn’t pacing at SRM this year, and that I want to run as much XC as I can this season (especially before swim meets start up in earnest), running the EO was a go! Much love to my husband for holding down the fort until lunchtime on Saturday so I could go run fast in the grass with my teammates.

The nice thing about running a somewhat obscure distance at a race you’ve never done before is that there’s an automatic PR involved (woot), but it’s also fun to sometimes go into races blindly. I knew nothing about the course, and that was okay! Exciting, even! Coach Lisa mentioned that the EO course was one of her favs, but I had no idea why. Luckily, we managed to field a full women’s team — the first time in many years, from what I understand — and a 2-and-change mile warm-up gave us a nice course preview of what we’d be trying to canvass fast in less than an hour. 

Spring Lake Regional Park was the staging ground for the race, and from what I gleaned, it was most definitely the place to be in SR on Saturday morning. There’s a flat, paved multi-use trail surrounding said lake (replete with lots of pedestrians, strollers, cyclists, you name it), but then there seemed to be several off-shoots that give folks some singletrack or somewhat technical, rocky and gnarly sections, too. There’s a lot of different flavors present, and we’d be taking advantage of the park’s diversity and running on all of it. Compared to the Santa Cruz XC Challenge that we had just run the weekend prior, the EO was significantly flatter, much more exposed (read: hot and weirdly humid), rockier, and in the few parts there were ascents or descents, they were short and drastic. At one point in the course, runners ran up the side of a dam, and at some other point, we started on top of … something (no idea) and ran down the face of it. 

My main take-away from the warm-up was to simply pay attention the entire race and not space out, else I would most surely eat shit, if not (also) hurt myself. Sometimes I get all day-dreamy when I run/race, but it most definitely wasn’t in my best interests at this course.

I find cross-country racing a bit liberating in the sense that for me, it’s all effort-based. Oftentimes my singular goal is to not eat shit and embarrass myself — see above note — so when I’m racing, I’m trying to hold in my head thoughts related to my effort at that given moment (relative to how much race is left), what the terrain is like and anticipating when we’ll be transitioning to something significantly different, and finally, what my placement is like at any given time and if I can hold or advance my position. It’s a constantly-changing game of calibrating effort and anticipating others’ moves around me, while also making sure that I’m making appropriate contact with the ground, and also ensuring that I’m covering said ground as quickly as I can, given everything else going on. It’s kinda like a big ol’ exercise in managing stuff (and some to-be-expected hard-running-induced discomfort), and it’s like a tactical fun game of chasing adults ahead of me. It’s a blast.  

My legs felt somewhere on the decent-but-still-heavy side, given that I had run 4 of the 5 preceding days pushing my 4 year-old in the stroller (weighing between 90-95 pounds of kid + stroller), but again, when you’re racing on perceived effort, the degree or intensity of “leg freshness” isn’t super important. On Friday morning’s pre-dawn run, Janet had been drilling into me the importance of “rib cage DOWN!” (in an effort to facilitate diaphragmatic breathing), so throughout the race, I tried to keep my form consistent and advantageous instead of the usual whackadoo mechanics that no doubt feel natural to me but probably aren’t doing me much service. 

Anyway. In the final mile of the race, I surrendered two positions, but I was ultimately able to take back one, which was gratifying; everyone around me was working tough, and no doubt we were pulling each other along. XC really is a team endeavor. The final .4 or so of the course was on flat pavement, so I tried what I could to muster a kick, and I finished feeling satisfied with the effort I put out that morning. 

I posted a faster average than I did at SC, but the fact that the courses are completely different terrains and distances probably dilutes that apparent progress a bit. By the week’s end, I was just shy of 50 miles for the week and had been running consistently for over a month, so I think the fitness is beginning to glimmer ever-so-slightly. At any rate, I had a blast at the EO, and the four hours of driving really weren’t all that bad. 

My teammate (and carpool-mate) Heather and I logged a long cool-down to put each of us just shy of 11 for Saturday morning — punctuated by many stops to cheer for the masters men runners and the open men — and by 11am, we packed up and were ready to ship back south. Heather and I both agreed that the race director of the EO surely knew what she/he was doing with this course because it isn’t for the faint of heart (as is probably the case for most XC races, I’d imagine). Even with its relative flatness, the variability in terrain is enough to challenge even the most conditioned among us, and oftentimes late August in Santa Rosa can be unforgiving, in terms of temperature. We lucked out, however (save for the weird humidity brought on by some weird weather off the coast) and had ourselves a super fun, sunny, and beautiful August morning. 

Again, if you’re looking to spice up your training and challenge yourself in a new and exciting way — that won’t necessarily consume the entirety of your weekend — seriously consider one (or more) of these local PA USATF XC races between now and mid-November. Runners can run with teams or as open/unattached, and the vibe is positive, competitive, and fun. (Eds. note: It’s not a secret that there are some seriously speedy PA racers out there (including many who are aspiring to qualify/have qualified for the Olympics at various distances), but there are also lots of “normal” or “everyday” runners who race, too. Don’t worry. Whether you finish first, last, or somewhere in the middle, you’ll be supported. We’re all out there to have fun and work hard).