tracks n treads 2013

Well I can’t say EVERYTHING went perfect, but I can say that it was an excellent race even with a few glitches.

So let me see if I can tell you the story of tracks n treads in less than 100 pages.  Oh, quit moaning, I will keep it short.

As you know the weather this year has been more than crazy, we don’t know from day to day if it’s going to rain, sleet, snow, or be hot enough to jump in the pool.  So as we were just 3 weeks out from the race, and we ended up with 12 inches of snow, I was more than a little worried about anyone showing up to race. Just a week before race day, we only had about 50 entrants, but then the weather got nice and by the closing of online registration, just two days before the race, we had 105 entries. After race day registration, we had 159 entrants.  I guess I need to thank mother nature for that.  The weather was perfect, in the low 60’s at start time and the trails both run and bike were in perfect condition.

In the past we have always gotten a lot more trail runners than biathlon, but this year was different, which makes me believe that the word is getting out to the mountain biking community that this is a great race.  So here are the stats for the race.

Biathlon - 82 Male, 19 Female, 12 Team Male, 12 Team Co-ed                    

Trail Run - 10 Male, 12 Female

There are even more stats, which I love, but most people don’t so I won’t bore you with them.  Thanks to Randy from Metro Milers for leading the timing team and getting me the stats.

Now that you have the stats let me tell you a little about the day.  We had great volunteers that helped mark the course and setup the transition and finish line. 

Finish Line

Wade did a great job making the finish line interesting with a hill and a cyclocross barrier to cross, and with red bike sculptures along the finish chute. I bet there is no other race that you can get an art exhibit with your race at no extra charge.  

Bicycle Sculptures

The barrier gave spectators plenty of entertainment, watching the variety of ways people crossed the barrier.  This guy in particular was very cool.

Cool Dude jumping the barrier

All the pre-race setup was finished on Friday and on Saturday we just had to pull the race off.  We started the day with late coming information about a 5K race starting and running on some of the same course as our bikers and the race start time was about the same time as our bikers would be coming through.  Lucky for us Mike was able to reach the race director and workout a safety plan just before the race. We also found out about a canoe race so there were spectators all over the course.  We adapted to the change and no one was hurt.

Racers showed up and got registered, picking up a very cool custom printed Camelbak water bottle and KIND bars. 

Participants Schwag

The volunteers worked overtime getting everyone checked in. There were a couple bib number mix ups due to changes from trail run to biathlon, but other than that, everything went extremely smooth.  Soon we had everyone in place and after some pre-race comments, we were ready to go. Oh wait, I have one story to tell at this point.

My daughter China and her friend Jordyn had one important job to do, it was to stand at the top of Whiteside hill with the police and make sure that no cars came through as the runners crossed the road.  So Jeff, the Run Course Lead took them to their post and tells them what to do. Well as they stand there, they have a great idea to run to the car and get a blanket because it was kind of windy and they were cold.  Being teenagers, they didn’t think to check the time, so they headed back to the car and Jorydn starts to cross the street out of the cross walk, China tells her not to J walk because you can get a ticket. They get to the overpass and see the runners take off, so they turn and start running as fast as they can to get back to their post, Jordyn is running for the cross walk and China yells “just J walk” so they cross the street and are only yards in front of the first runner, they barely make it to their post as the runners pass by. 

The Race has started

They are so out of breath that they had no idea if there were cars coming or not, it’s just a good thing the police were there.  They did go back and hand out water though, at least they were good at that.

The volunteers that almost missed the race

So as you can see, the race took off at a fast pace with Travis Redden and Garrett Fulkerson running neck and neck most of the run. 

Travis followed by Garrett

Travis finished the run first and went through the finish chute, but then we noticed he was on a team, so he just ran about 200 meters out of his way and had to run over and tag his teammate.  Russ quickly ran down to the tunnel to direct the runners to make sure that didn’t happen a second time.  Garrett Fulkerson came in winning the trail run, with Renee Wilcox winning the female division of the trail run. Garrett ran a time of 27:07, while Renee finished in a smoking fast 30:52.  These were both super fast times for the difficulty of the course.

More and more people headed out on bikes while trail runners finished the race, there was an incredible race going between the 1^st and 2^nd place overall all men, Anthony Dust and Matt Fulbright were racing it out for 1^st overall with Anthony taking first in a time of 1:05:24 with Matt coming in just over a minute behind him. Melisa Lemus took 1^st place for the women in a time of 1:10:22.

Anthony Dust

Another notable finish was our club president, Mike Wever.  He competed in tracks n treads for the first time and had a pretty good finish for an old guy, but he couldn’t beat Pat or Keith, which means they will never let him live it down.

Pat

Keith

Mike

Mike at the finish

Soon it was time for the awards and other then one competitor’s time getting lost, due to a missing bib tag, all went well.  Winners took home a really cool acrylic leaf.

Cool Awards

We had several people taking photos and they can be found on the Team Godzilla website, along with the full results. 

I want to take time to thank everyone involved with this race, the Cyclery and Fitness for coming out and helping with bike needs, Wild Tracks for loaning us their cyclocross barrier, Metro Milers for doing the race timing, SIUE for allowing us to hold this race on their beautiful campus and providing police protection, KIND for donating the very tasty and nutritious bars, that everyone loved, and of course GORC for building and maintaining great trails for us to ride and run on.

A special shout out goes to all those behind the scenes that do the work no one ever sees, thanks Jeff S, Mike W, Russ D, Mike H, Andrea M, Andrea W. And lets not forget the 40+ volunteers who were out there on race day.

2014 will be our 5^th year for this event and we hope to make it our biggest and most memorable yet.  I hope to see you next year.

I'm Back

Finally, after 11 weeks off, I'm back.  I may not be fast at anything, but at least I'm working out again.  During the last week of February I got the OK from both the orthopedist and the heart doctor to start working out again.  My orthopedist gave me free rein, but the heart doctor said I could start on with half workouts.

So of course I listened to him, you know how I always listen to what the doctors tell me.  Mark and I went out for an easy 10 miles on the GORC trails. 

Getting ready to test the old body out

I got to test out how the tailbone was going to do on the seat of my mountain bike and how the old ticker was going to take riding the awesome single track.

Just joking, no CPR was really needed



The ride went great, I felt pretty good considering how out of shape I was, but the old heart worked well and the tailbone didn't hurt much during the ride.

 

 

Made it back, alive and well

The next day I went out for a run in the woods with my friend Jenny, we covered about 4 miles at a horribly slow pace, but I was just happy to be out there.

 

Going out for my first run

So now I have been working out for 4 weeks, my bike rides are getting longer, about 3 hours now and my runs are too, but I haven't run over 7 miles at in one run yet, I'm hoping to be up to 10 mile runs by the end of April.  Hopefully with time, will come speed.  I guess I will just keep working at it and soon the speed will come back.

 

 

And as a gift to myself for being really good and taking the full 11 weeks off, like the doctor instructed, I bought myself an CX/Adventure bike. I just got it Friday night and rode it Saturday, but then the stupid snow came on Sunday and I haven't been on it again.

 

Me and my new Cannondale SuperX

Even though I didn't get to ride on Sunday, I did find something fun to do in the snow.

 

Out in the the snow with the kids and Ella Pitsgerald

 

 

I hope by summer to be back and track and be able to race in USARA Nationals with Chuck.

Who Is Robin Rongey



Robin running the Chubb Trial in the middle of winter

My friend Patrick asked me to write a post for his blog about “who I am”, so as I was thinking about it I thought, hey I can post this on my blog also. As I was trying to write the post I kept thinking, I really don’t know what I can say.  I mean, I could tell the truth and say that I am this super smart, ultra fit, amazingly hot mom, “oh wait, I’m channeling Reese Witherspoon again, so that’s not right.  Well I could tell you what I have been called in the past, the little round ball of muscle, and the … oh wait, I can’t put the other names in print, so maybe that’s not who I am either. 

After putting some more thought to it, I think to tell you who I am, I need to tell you where I come from.  So let’s see if I can sum up my life’s journey in just a few short paragraphs.

I was born in March of 1964, one month premature, my name was going to be April, but when I was born in March, my mom decided on Robin because it made her think of springtime.  I was early arriving in the world and have been early at everything since, like talking, walking, tying my shoes, everything I do, I want to do fast and be the first one done, it doesn’t matter what it is, work tasks, workouts, races, I was even the fastest person at picking berries in the summer, no one could keep up with me. I think I'm seeing a pattern here; maybe that is where my competitiveness comes from. 

Me spending the summer in my swim suit

I grew up in the projects, we were poor, but of course I didn’t know it at the time because poor is relative.  We may have been financially poor, but we had a close family and always had fun, we just did stuff that didn’t cost anything. So many people living around us were poor in my eyes and I always felt so sorry for them, little did I know, I was as poor as they were. 

I am the only girl in a family of 5 kids.  I am the second in line, but I ruled the house like I was the oldest. I was always told I was really mean and bossy.

Me and the Boys eating breakfast

 I spent my summers heading outside at daylight and not coming in until dark. We played kickball, hide n seek, kick the can, football, baseball, soccer, we even setup a ring with our shoes that we ran around acting like we were in the roller derby and knocking people out of the ring.  Most often I was the only girl allowed to play any of the neighborhood sports. I think that is because all the boys were afraid of me, at least that’s what my brothers tell me. 

When I was 9 my dad died and at 12 we moved from the projects to the country. I went from having hundreds of kids to play with, in a quarter mile radius to having 10 kids to play with, in a 5 mile radius. This is when I started picking up endurance activities, riding my bike, skateboarding, even running, I would run laps around my block and it was 2 miles long.

Two weeks into my freshman year of high school I was in a bad car accident, I spent a few months in a hospital and then spent months on crutches.  My mom was told that I would most likely have brain damage, so now when I do stupid things I blame it on the brain damage. It took a year to recover, so it was my sophomore year before I could play any sports.  I ran track and cross country the rest of high school, then I ran track in college on a scholarship.  I was just an above average runner, but heck back then they just wanted to find girls that would run, that’s why I had a scholarship.  I was actually the first girl to ever run cross country for SIU-E.  

After college I got married and had 3 kids, I continued to run, but not really competitive.  When my kids started getting self sufficient I started training hard again and decided to try some new things, like triathlons, mountain biking and road biking.  I loved it all!  Then in 1996, I took a job with Boeing and met my friend and now teammate Chuck Vohsen. 



Me and Chuck finishing the Berryman Adventure race



You all know Chuck as a Badass Adventure racer, but back in the day, he was just some overweight jeep driving, martial arts practicing engineer.  That was when I could beat him both on foot and on wheels, but now, I’m just lucky he lets me follow him around and share his adventure racing glory. 

 

That leads me up to the current day and the fact that I am so lucky that I have a strong mother who raised 5 kids on a yearly income that is less than I make in a month, having 4 brothers who even though they called me mean and bossy, they put the smackdown on anyone else who said it, having friends like Chuck who would fight a bear for me or give me his last sip of water if I was out, having 3 healthy kids that fight like cats and dogs and are always planning the next way to pull the wool over their dad and my eyes, but at the end of the day always give me hugs and “I love yous”. I guess what I’m trying to say is that all the events in my life have made me who I am today.  

I still sometimes wonder who I am, but if I have to say who I think I am in one big run-on sentence, this is what it would say. 

I’m a girl who works hard at everything I do, I’m very organized, to the point of annoyance to my family, I love being outside and I love adventure of any kind, I never give up because I know with persistence I can accomplish anything, I may not be great at it, but I can do it, and most of all, I’m a real cool mom, well my kids may not say that, but I like to think I am. 



Garrett and Jade checking out their new sister China



A Guide to Having Your Tailbone Removed

This guide will walk you through the process of getting your tailbone removed in a step by step format.

Step 1

Go to a stupid Warrior Dash, slide down a muddy hill at the end of the race, hit a rock and break your tailbone off.

Step 2

Go to the doctor and find out that you shouldn't to do anything for six weeks during the middle of adventure race season

Step 3

Play Internet doctor and DO NOT FOLLOW a real doctors orders, then end up taking the time off months later and then a year later, you finally figure it out and you need your broken tailbone removed.

Step 4

Get the tailbone removed.

Get up early and ready to go to the hospital

Get ready for surgery

Do stupid things when you're under the influence of pain meds

Go for your first 2 mile walk 10 days after surgery

Second 2 mile walk 11 days out

Third 2 mile walk 12 days out 

Seeing friends running while out on my 4th 2 mile walk, SO Jealous 

Me waiting for my First pre-op run

Climbing & Ropes at Wyman

What happens when a bunch Team Godzilla teammates get together for an afternoon of fun, well it's just too much to write about, so instead I will show you. 

Watch the video, it's not quite like being there, but you get the idea. Oh and China beat everyone up the rock wall, and she even took the hard route.

Video Music courtesy The Great Jazz Musician Garrett Rongey

 

Skippo Trial Run

Rock Racing - a victory for Jacob

So, have I whined enough about what bad shape I’m in, if you don’t think so then you haven’t been around me enough lately.  I know Chuck keeps saying he is in bad shape too, but not nearly as bad as me.  I mean how did we both just finish an Ironman race only 8 weeks ago and then have a simple little 20K trail run almost kill us.

Well this is a very short tale, but I’m sure you will get a full picture of what transpired.  Chuck and I both signed up for the 30K race, but as the race neared we both came to realize that we were in no shape to run a 30K, so we both dropped down to the 20K race.  Chuck’s son Jacob was also signed up for the 20K, which put Chuck in a bad position, he would have to do anything he could to beat Jacob. 

I got to Castlewood and parked my car right next to SuperKate, she says “I just got a text from Chuck, Jacob forgot his running shoes so they have to go back home to get them, they would like one of us to pick up their race packets”.  Since Kate already had hers, I said I would grab them.  As I was in line to pick up the race packets the computers went down and the race organizers were scrambling to manually give out numbers.  I also found out that they only had size small girl’s shirts so I would have to have one mailed to me when they came in.  This race was not starting out well.  I put my number on and waited for Chuck and Jacob to show up, if they didn’t show by the start of the race I planned to leave their numbers on my car windshield for them to grab when they arrived.  As I stood at the back of the pack of runners, stretching I saw them walking up, it was one minute until start time.  They quickly pinned their numbers on as the race started.  Jacob ran for the bathroom hoping to get back before our wave took off. As we took off Chuck and I saw Jacob running to the starting line. I figured in about a mile he would be passing us.

So this race was two laps for the 20K and each lap consisted of a 6.2 mile loop with 217 stairs to climb on each lap.  As we hit the stairs, Chuck and I were still together, we stayed together for a long while then I heard Jacob yell my name from the trail above, he was about to catch us.  Well that’s all it took as soon as Chuck heard Jacob, he took off like a lightning bolt.  I kept trudging along thinking Jacob would over take me at any moment, but he never showed up.  When he finally caught me we were at the creek and he showed me his war wounds, he had taken a nasty fall right after he saw us. He is a tough kid though and he got back up and kept running. Soon he and Chuck were ahead of me and I could see them about half way up cardiac hill as I was just beginning the climb.  We had less than 3 miles of the first lap left. I caught the boys at the top of cardiac hill and from there we passed each other off and on for the rest of the race. 

When we ran past the finish line to start the second lap, Jacob and I were just behind Chuck and we both thought it would have been really nice to have turned into the finish line, but we didn’t, we trudged on.  On our second time up the stairs there were not as many people, we could have run, but REALLY, my legs would not have gone for that, so we walked up.  Then it was back to the cat and mouse game that we were playing with each other.  Just before the creek, SuperKate passed us and my gosh she was running well, and she was doing the 30K, this really put me in a mood.  How could she pass me like that and she had to do a third lap.  At least someone was having a good day.  

Really though it was a nice day, even a little warm, there were tons of people so it didn’t feel like I was last and at least I was close enough to talk to Chuck and Jacob some of the time. As I headed down the trial towards the road, I still, had the boys in my sights, but I didn’t think I could catch them.  All of the sudden a fellow Godzilla teammate, Maureen, comes flying by she was about to finish the 30K, I got lapped.  Now in my defense she is super fast and she won the 30K race, the overall Female, so at least I didn’t get passed by a snail.  As I got to the road Keith was sitting on the hill cheering me on, telling me that the boys were just in front of me.  As I ran down the last straight away, I see Jacob finish then Chuck finish right behind him.  I made the turn into the finish and the boys were there waiting for me cheering me on, that really felt good. 

So I finished the race 2 minutes behind Chuck and Jacob beat Chuck just by seconds.  I wanted to run a 2:30 and I ran a 2:30:30, so I’m calling that a victory.  Even though today, two days after the race, I’m still limping around, I think it was all worth it.  It was a great day spent with good friends and I got a little exercise to boot. Oh and Jacob won his age group and got a really cool glass. And Jeff who finished the 30K just behind us finishing the 20K, also won his age group. Even if I’m not fast, I can say I know people who are fast.

NOTE: Chuck was in such a hurry to make it to the race that he had been driving on empty for 25 miles, so I had to follow him to the gas station after the race to make sure he made it.  Well he did, but it would have been pretty funny if he hadn’t. 

Up The Creek 2012

The First Annual "Up the Creek" run went off without a hitch, well maybe not a hitch, but it did have downed trees, boulders, mud slides, sand, water, logs and more. This was a top secret underground run, it was by invite only and if I told you where it actually was held at I would have to kill you, so don't ask.  Rather than try to explain the course, I decided to just show it to you.

Oh and I invited my daughter to run, I told her it was the "Up the Creek" run.  She must not have understood what that meant, because when we got to the creek, she said that she really wanted to curse.  I told her, you're not 21 so you can't.  Even though she got 3rd place, she still says she will never do it again.  I will say she toughed it out, her legs got caught in some limbs and she had large deep scraps from her knee to her waist on both sides, when I saw them I knew they hurt.

This video highlights her trek through the creek.  Oh and the music playing in the back ground is courtesy my son.


See you next year, that is if you are lucky enough to get in.