I finally had a chance to run the Mount Washington Road Race after several attempts to make it in via the open lottery. As it turns out, the Maine Track Club had a handful of bibs no one seemed to want to use, so I jumped on the chance to scratch another race off my "bucket list".
I have never driven up the Mount Washington Auto Road, so had no idea what to expect. All I had to go on was the slogan for the race, "Only One Hill", and they were not kidding. The course climbs 4,600 feet to the summit of Mount Washington over 7.6 miles.
The race started promptly at 9am under clear skies. I started about 10 rows back and had open road after only about 1/2 mile. I would not see another flat spot on the course from here on out.
I ran consistently and only walked at the first three water stops. I have run a lot of mountains, but my legs were not used to the non-stop uphill.
I crossed the halfway mark at 44:44. There was a nice big timing clock, which was my only guide as to how I was doing (no GPS or watch). My goal was to finish between 1:30 and 1:45.
At mile 4 I started a new strategy of running for 20 seconds as fast as I could, then power walk for 20 seconds. This worked really well and I slowly picked off quite a few runners.
Time flew by quickly and I was soon in the last 1/2 mile. The summit was shrouded in clouds and it was quite nippy. I could hear the crowds so decided to just push through the tired feeling as best I could. This was a challenge as the last hundred yards is wicked steep.
I rounded the corner and entered the finish chute with 3 hours on the clock. My official time was 3:12 which was good enough for 128th out of 1,055 finishers and 13th out of 91 in the Male 50-54 category.
As if this was not painful enough, next up is the Loon Mountain Race, which finishes at the top of the Upper Walking Boss, a half-mile section of the final climb featuring a 40% incline. Yikes.
The full results for the race can be seen below:
Mount Washington Road Race Results
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