This past weekend brought the fourth cross-country race of the PA series, the Golden Gate Park Open, and of particular interest (and sentimentality) to me, my team, Wolfpack Running Club, hosted the event. This historic 4-mile, 2x2mile-looped course covered the same ground, in the same way, as it did when I last ran the course back in ‘17 at PA Champs, but this time around, things felt a little different.

For the past two years that I’ve run the GGP Open, at this time of year, the course wasn’t the usual (and historic) Lindley Meadow iteration. Instead, back in ‘17, the organizers had to begin/end the course on the nearby polo fields to accommodate some permitting restrictions. That makes sense, since SF is a pretty big place and all, and people can reserve sections of GGP for whatever. (If memory serves, we couldn’t run the historic course in ‘17 because part of it was reserved for a birthday party.) 

Anyway, when it came time for the ‘18 iteration, the course repeated what it was the year prior, the non-historic, polo fields-style iteration. For someone like me — someone new to the PA XC scene — starting and ending the GGP Open on the polo fields, and not on Lindley Meadow, was no big deal simply because I didn’t know any better.

For local vets of the sport, however, the polo fields iteration of the GGP was a somewhat undesirable blip in the history of the event. Not having the historical perspective of a local racer who has been doing this stuff here for a long time, I’ve only known the GGP open as an event that began and ended at the polo fields; the PA championship race (“Champs”) in November was the only PA XC race that began and ended in the Meadow. 

I’m belaboring the starting and ending nuances of the GGP Open course here because by virtue of my club hosting the event, I spent my non-racing moments of the morning assisting at same-day registration and interacting with a lot of runners. Multiple people expressed how happy they were that we weren’t “doing polo fields” that day. In fact, unprovoked by anything I said, one PA racer enthusiastically told me about how historic the Lindley Meadow course was and how happy he was that we were *finally* running that course for the GGP Open, insinuating that that was the “real” course. Suffice it to say that that runners (understandably) have strong opinions about these things. 

Moving on, it’s here that I’ll note that I don’t have any startling revelations to share, nor can I speak to any of the behind-the-scenes intricacies that are entailed in organizing and hosting a cross-country race in a major city park in a large urban setting — I’ll gladly defer to Andy, our team’s race director, and Coach Lisa, his co-director, for that — but simply judging by the sheer number of Wolfpack members, friends, and family members who showed up to help out on the event morning, let me assure you… there’s a lot involved. A *lot*. 

Many teammates came from all over the bay area (and beyond) to help out in some capacity (race day reg, course monitoring, finish line chute duties, you name it) and of course to also provide the sincere and heartfelt words of support and encouragement mid-race, to everyone racing, regardless of which team singlet was adorning their chest. We all know that those mid-race words matter, especially when you’re grinding and in the thick of it (and on this storied and hard AF course, no less!).    

It’s with this amazing and soul-filling backdrop of knowing that it’s my team behind the scenes, putting on a lovely and well-executed show, that my actual race took place. A gaggle of women and I arrived hours early to help with event set-up, and with a little bit of time to spare, we ran one warm-up lap to scope out everything and re-acquaint ourselves with the terrain. No doubt this course is so storied in part because it’s so very prototypical cross-country: a grassy meadow start and finish, a minor stretch of asphalt, a gopher-pocked field, singletrack, a few bouts of sand, rocky and rooty patches, tiny-but-still-significant-when-you’re-trying-to-race-fast ascents and descents, and more. It’s one of those courses where you can’t help but think to yourself holy shit, we’ve only run (1 mile/2/3/4 miles)?! That’s it?! The relative work-to-distance ratio is sorta silly.

In other words: this course is so, so fun, in the most (lovely yet) inane way possible. 

We fielded enough participants to have masters women/men’s and open women’s/men’s teams (hooray!), and everyone who raced also volunteered. Our course monitors were situated pretty frequently throughout the course, which meant runners always knew where we were going and that we all got those soul-affirming great job, you’re doing awesome, keep going supportive commentary throughout the entirety of the race, which matters. 

I’m 700+ words deep by now and have said nothing about my race, but the pictures above probably speak for themselves, to a degree. Right off the grassy field start line, both hamstrings felt extremely strained when we made the fast ascent from the grass to the path. It took a little bit of time (and some downhill) for the panicked feelings of ohshitohshitohshit to subside; my only explanation is that I wasn’t adequately warmed up. About a mile in, when we were in the first singletrack stretch before the gopher-pocked field, I rolled or began to roll my ankles no fewer than three times, before/after/during the sand portions, once hard enough that the women behind me audibly gasped and asked if I was ok. (I was, and thanks for looking out for me!) Throughout the race, I felt pretty strong but not very fast — again, that same place where I’ve been since May at MTB — and on my second lap, I surrendered two places and got back one. At the very end of the race, with about a quarter-mile to go, I tried to close the gap on the woman in front of me and flung myself into a dead sprint, grassy field finish line be damned. Ultimately, she beat me by two seconds, but my Garmin data details that the final 30 seconds of my race waded into sub-5 territory, with a low of 4:17, which is probably some sort of record for me in a race (let alone a XC race). That’s exciting. 

My time was ~1:40 slower than it was when I last ran this course in 2017, but it’s of little consequence to me simply because in ‘17, I was just a few weeks out from CIM and thus had a ton of concerted training under my belt. For the past few weeks, I’ve been sitting around 50 mpw but without any real workouts to speak of. I was happy that I could find a really high-for-me gear at the end of a tough race on Sunday, and I finished feeling like I had tried hard. So far this XC season, my goals at each race have simply been to have fun, work hard, and don’t give up/stay in it when it gets uncomfortable. Provided I do all of those, I walk away (tired but) gratified. That’s enough.

Following the women’s race were the masters men and open men’s races, and not too long after that came our team picnic. Hanging with my teammates — and meeting some of them for the first time — was such a lovely way to bookend the morning. The morning left me completely jazzed for the rest of the XC season and got me hyped about running the course again at Champs in November. (Here again is my usual open invite to one and all to come run any of the PA cross-country meets. Ask me any questions you have!). 

Congrats and THANK YOU to everyone who came out and raced and/or helped on Sunday; you helped make the day what it was.  xo