7 Sisters 2006

I’ve been slacking in my race reports lately, and when I finally decided to get back to writing, I realized I had to go back to some earlier races. The quality of some of the early season trail races was impressive, and the stories need to be told. For many of the New England trail running stalwarts, 7 Sisters is the start of the trail racing season. If this is true, then the season got off to a very fast start.

I spent the night prior to the race over at the Low’s. Paul seemed to be running well, after a course record at Merrimack, and I asked him what his plan was for 7 Sisters. As I had expected, after the first year he ran the race and destroyed the course record, he hadn’t been tapering much for the race. This year, he said he backed off a bit in his training so he could give himself a chance to lower his own record. I made a mental note to wish him a good race, and let him go very early on.

At the start, Paul and I got out into the lead, and after a couple minutes, he took off. That’s about all the first hand knowledge I have of his race. I settled into my own pace, with Leigh Schmitt and Dmitry Drozdov close behind. Dmitry had beaten me at the Muddy Moose trail race two weeks before 7 Sisters, but I thought he might struggle with the rough Sisters terrain.

As we got to the top of the first hill, Leigh snuck by me. I tucked in behind him, and soon realized he was very fit. I was able to stay with him for the first two climbs, but he began to pull away on the third climb. If you start racing too early at 7 Sisters, you will pay the price in the second half, so I backed off a little. As soon as a gap opened up between Leigh and myself, Dmitry passed me and closed on Leigh at a rapid pace. I was definitely wrong about his trail running abilities. He was handling the rocks and roots as well as any of us.

I was able to maintain contact with Leigh and Dmitry almost until the turn around at halfway. Not long after I started the long downhill to turn around, I saw Paul coming back up. He said he hit halfway in 49 minutes, which is pretty insane. He was definitely going for the course record, and then some. Dmitry and Leigh weren’t all that far behind, either. I still felt good, and was hoping to reel them in over the second half of the race.

I never saw either of them prior to the finish, though. Leigh’s ability to run fast on technical trails wore down Dmitry, who probably didn’t gain any time on me after the halfway point. Leigh set a big PR of 1:48:15 for the race, and became one of the very few to dip under 1:50 at 7 Sisters. Dmitry ran 1:50:19, which is probably the fastest debut.

After winning the race last year by a whole 2 seconds over Leigh, it was all I could do to hold onto 4th place this year. I noticed Matt Estes behind me about 20 minutes from the finish. I tried to drop him on the last couple of climbs, but it wasn’t enough. He’s a phenomenal descender, and I only had about 10 seconds on him when we began the final descent. Just like last year, I had to bypass my brain and throw myself down the boulder-strewn free fall that is the 7-Sisters finish. I was able to stay on my feet long enough to hold off Matt by 5 seconds. I managed to run an even paced 1:52:03, which is my second fastest time.

However, the race of the day belonged to Paul Low. He destroyed his old course record by over a minute, and even though Leigh had the race of his life, Paul still won by over 6 minutes. It would be interesting to see if Paul would run any faster with some competition, but who would you get? Train a mountain goat to run the course and pin a number on it?