The first day of spring had perfect conditions for the Merrimack river snowshoe race.  This would most likely be the last chance to snowshoe in Eastern Mass.

The event had been originally slated to take place on January 4th.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your outlook) back in January the Eastern part of Massachusetts had no snow. 

The race was held as a cross country race and 20 runners took part with Jim Pawlicki taking top honors in 5:16 pace for the 3.3 mile mostly out and back run.  I had hoped to have the race sometime during the winter, however we never had a decent snowfall until this week.  Andover got about 8 inches of snow on Tuesday night.  Dan Verrington and I checked out the course on Thursday and it was in very good shape for a snowshoe race.  We were only the second set of prints to hit the trail, which had one set of Dion's and one set of ski tracks when we ran it.  We were able to easily "jog" the course in 8:30 pace.  Some sun and upper 40 degree temperatures on Thursday and Friday left about 4 inches on the ground for the Saturday noon start.  Dan ran the course in road running shoes and deemed it "runnable".  Rich Bolt and I flagged the course and met up with Bill Morse (Dracut, MA) who was also out checking out the course.  Bill noted that he had run the course on Wednesday and "it was great, I didn't want to stop".  We completed marking the course in 33 minutes. 

Rich decide to run despite a sore ankle as it looked like Bill and I would be the only entrants.  Norm Sheppard pulled up about 15 minutes before the start and that made for a field of four.  Norm had also run the race in January finishing 13th in 6:49 pace.  I had finished in 7th in 6:18 pace in what was my first test after taking a bad spill on some black ice and hurting my hamstring.  The snowshoe version of the race would be my first hard effort since tearing my hamstring back on February 17th.  I had hoped for 6-10 runners to show up, but knowing that this is a busy weekend (New Bedford 1/2 Marathon, Winners circle 30K) and that word only went out on Thursday night, getting 4 of us to run was fine. 

Dan stuck around to do the timing and with his "ready, go" we were off.  Rich yelled "wah hoo" and I yelled "Cayuga" and we took off.  Rich settled in right behind me and I tried to concentrate on working hard while listening to my hamstring.  We hit the mile in 6:34.  The sun was out, the wind was light and the course was beautiful.  We hit the tough section at just after 1.5 miles when the course turns back.  The big field (gas line) was very soft and the going was a bit slower.  We completed that 1.3m in 8:50.  I tried to push it a bit during the last mile, knowing full-well that Rich could go by any time he wanted.  The gentleman that he is, Rich allowed me to lead and I brought us to the finish with a 6:19 last mile.  Rich was pleased as he had hoped to run somewhat hard and "really beat up the Atlas dual-tracs" that he was going to send back for repair.  They definitely took a beating as about 200 meters of the course is run under the highway (Rt 93) on rocks.  I was pleased with my time which was only 56 seconds slower than what I raced in the XC version back in January.  Norm and Bill both seemed to have a good time although neither accepted any of the Reebok shoes I was giving away as prizes, they did however take a race t-shirt with January 4, 2004 scratched out and March 20 written in.  Bill did state that he will be back next week for the 13th running of the Merrimack river trail race (10m).  Rich, Dan and I went out and removed all of the course markers (31 minutes) to get our short 10m for the day.  Now we just need a little warm weather and the course will be in fine shape for the "River" next week!