Late August update

Bit of a breather here, meaning a couple of weekends with no new towns to run in. And just in time, too, because in the past two weeks I've been nursing a stubbornly inflamed Achilles tendon in my right foot. Usually this goes away readily, but it's stuck around pretty consistently since the race in Epsom on Sunday, Aug. 14.

So, besides applying cold packs to it, I've been staying off it, which is sometimes the only cure. Hope it calms down in time for the races that starting coming fast and furious again next month. I'd still like to go for a couple of long-ish ones, including the New Hampshire Half-Marathon on Sunday, Oct. 1, but that's only going to happen if things go well.

Well, it's been a productive season. I've added about a dozen new communities to my roster, taking it up to a total of 126 (out of 234) and passing the half-way point somewhere in there. I might have a discrepancy in the count this spring, which I have to look into and rectify. I tell you, it's always something.

In the meantime, I've finally been getting on the bike and getting in some mileage. We've had excellent summer weather here in New Hampshire -- sunny, breezy, and dry. So on Monday I rode for about an hour, and then on Tuesday I pushed myself and took a hilly ride all the way out to New Boston, a nearby town, and then back through Goffstown and Bedford. About 2.25 hours, longest ride by far this season and on my new Giant Defy touring bike.

It's been more than a year since I had my bike-destroying accident (on July 31, 2010) and to be honest, I'm still a little apprehensive on some of the narrower roads when traffic is present. Hope that goes away, but it's hard to not be thinking that every driver who comes up behind you could be the one...

Most drivers are considerate and clearly drive in a way that shows a willingness to share the road. To those who do, thanks!

Sunday, Aug. 14: report from Epsom (#126)

Ah, the increasingly rare joy of a short drive to a road race. That's what I experienced this morning in getting out to the Epsom Old Home Day 4-miler, which took place about a half-hour drive from my home in Bedford, N.H. (And that included a stop for gas!) Really - with very few remaining towns that are that close to home base, I've resigned myself to a lot of windshield time to continue this quest. So when you get one that's this close in, it's a special gift. And the weather was nice, too: building overcast without a lot of sun to heat things up.

Webster Park is a big town recreation area right on Route 28. I've driven by it probably a hundred times and never noticed it, but it's on a grand scale, with fields and roads and granite benches here and there. It's also the site of the town's annual Old Home Day festivities, which was what prompted the road race, which was a benefit for the park.

It was a classic N.H. race in two respects: the familiar voice of Andy Schachat was on the P.A. system calling it, and Delta Dental CEO Tom Raffio was running. The course was a straight-forward out-and-back, with Epsom Central School the turn-around point, though Schachat made sure everyone knew to turn left at the army tank (really!) to enter the park on the way back. (The retired tank, a full-size real life one, is on display outside the American Legion Ellwood O. Wells Post No. 112.)

In case you're interested, here's a picture of the tank, which to me looks like an M60 A3, which the U.S. phased out in 1997, I'm told. But oops, several people apparently overshot the tank on the way back, adding maybe an extra third of a mile to their run. I can how that happened, as the only turn indication was a white arrow chalked onto the road, and it was easy to miss with that big tank right in front of you. Well, these things happen. Next time I'd get a volunteer to main this spot.

The course was a nice one, with rolling hills and some sections along actual working cornfields, where the stalks are at their full height this time of year. I'm sure we crossed the grade of the long-abandoned Suncook Valley Railroad, but I couldn't tell exactly where.

Finished in 38:58, for a pace of 9:44, not bad and a nice recovery from yesterday's slow run in Richmond, N.H. Finished 37 out of 56. Entry fee, another reasonable $15. And I won the very last raffle prize: a visor made in China! And that's the story of Town #126. Only...er, 108 to go!

Aug. 13: Richmond (#125) at Camp Wiyaka

Richmond is one of those quiet New Hampshire backwoods towns, one that the railroads missed and everything else, too, I never expected to find a 5K road race there. But that's what happened today (Saturday, Aug. 13), as the good folks at Camp Wiyaka organized one as part of their annual Alumni Day, which marks the close of camp for the season.

I hadn't been in Richmond for years, but I have some prior involvement with the town. About 25 years ago, I tried to buy a 48-acre woodlot in a remote part of town. Asking price: $15,000. It was 1986. I had just graduated from college, and my idea was to build a cabin and use it for writing. (Present day reaction to this scheme from one of my colleagues: "Okay, Mr. Henry David Thoreau.") In my mind, I had my own version of my grandfather's asbestos hunting cabin, which still stands in the backwoods of Harrisville, N.H. This would be my own, and minus the asbestos.

The land fronted on a Class VI road, meaning one that was no longer maintained by the town. Small towns in N.H. are riddled with these, left from a time when most of the land was farms that have since been left to grow back to forest. To get there, a real estate agent and I drove up Benson Road as far as we could, then hiked in the rest of the way, about a half-mile. Like of lot of rural New Hampshire, it had been left abandoned sometime after the Civil War. It had beaver pond with a big dam, several small family graveyards in which the most recent date was 1888, and stone walls all over the place. Curiously, there was also an abandoned school bus that had somehow made it up there, and which someone had been living in until recently.

It was exactly what I wanted.

However, the catch was that the town would not issue a building permit for land with no access. No building permit, no cabin. So unless I wanted to live in the bus, I was stuck. The lot was good as forest, but not much else, unless I wanted to pay to bring the road up to town standards. Also, for the first time in my life, I encountered property taxes. So poof went that dream!

Plus, I found out that a few years prior, the bus was scene of a honest-to-goodness backwoods New Hampshire murder! Really -- the abandoned road led all the way into the town of Troy, where there was a tough country & western dance place, and one night a woman for some reason was dragged up the road to the bus, held captive, and eventually murdered!

This really happened.

It wouldn't have kept me from buying the place, and I often wonder what would have happened if I had. And now, 25 years later, here I am driving into Richmond to find Camp Wiyaka not too far from my own version of Paradise Lost -- just on the other side of Route 32.

The camp, 90 years old this season, consists of rustic buildings spread out along a small lake and up a small hill. Campers stay for a week at a time, sleeping in platform tents that bunk eight. There's a dining hall, recreation hall, playing fields, and overall the place looks pretty timeless -- not much different in 2011 than it probably did in 1921. Heck, I wouldn't have minded staying a week here.

On this Saturday morning, all the campers are gone, having departed the night before after completing Camp Wiyaka's final week of the 2011 season. Today is Alumni Day, with a road race at 9 a.m. kicking things off. Fine, except someone posted a 10 a.m. start online, which means me and a few others turn up after the race has been run!

Faced with this, the Camp Wiyaka organizers decided to run the same race all over again at 10 a.m. Course volunteers were told to maintain their stations (some walkers were still out there from the 9 a.m. start!) and a half-dozen of us lined up on the lakeside volleyball court for the second edition. Entrance fee was a reasonable $15.

The course was unusual and varied -- part rough trail, part paved road, part dirt road. The first part took us on a loop through the campgrounds, including behind the latrines, before getting us out onto paved Sandy Pond Road. We changed to a dirt road until the half-way point turn-around, then back, including the camp loop one more time before the finish.

I have to give credit to the volunteers who maintained their posts long after they expected the event to be over. They were cheerful and did their best to mask what must have been utter boredom -- a kid at one intersection was actually building a house of cards on the pavement!

Though I was a complete outsider, people were friendly enough, and I didn't feel like a visiting space alien as I explored the camp. Finishing time was 35:02, which is really slow, but I felt sluggish all week and I have a feeling the distance of the Camp Wiyaka Race was a little longer than 5K. But no matter. I had actually run a race in Richmond, N.H., thanks to the good folks of Camp Wiyaka.

Now, I need to go looking for some property...

Rindge (#124) on Saturday, Aug. 6

A belated post on the Rindge "Tour De Common" -- sorry, but it's been than kind of a week.

Nice weather, a little warm but overcast building in, for a 5K race in this town on the Massachusetts line, about an hour's drive from where I live. Not too much prior experience with Rindge, though technically the Jaffrey-Rindge School District was part of my beat when I was education writer for the Keene (N.H.) Sentinel, the local paper, two decades ago.

The only other thing I can think of is that I bought some coins at an auction house here many years ago, too. Another distinction of Rindge is that it's one of only a handful of New Hampshire communities with a one-syllable name. Offhand, the only others I can think of are Lee, Bath, Troy, and Hill. Oh, and Weare. (Where?)

Anyway! Very organized race with a really well laid-out course, too. Starting just above the town common at the police station; first mile drifted steadily downward, then bottomed out. Before Mile 2, we hit a series of upgrades, none of which were soul-destroying, but just enough to keep you focused. (It helped that a woman was continually coming up behind me, then walking, then catching up again, then walking, which kept me from slacking off.) Then, for maybe the last half-mile, it's a long downhill back to the town center, and razor straight and open so you can see who's in front of you and all that.

The net effect of all of this was to just pull me along at a quicker rate than usual, even though the sun was breaking through and starting to heat things up. Finished in 29:07, my fastest time in years! Pace of 9:24, vs. the usual 10-minute mile. I came in 41 out of 73 runners, or just five places out of placing in the top half, a rare occurrence for me.

One weird thing about this one was that after going to my car to change into a non-soaked shirt, I returned to the town common to find a group of woman line dancing as part of the awards ceremony. Hey, whatever. Also, I had a few moments to study the town's veterans memorial, which reads like a language lesson. Class, what tenses are in use here? Pay attention!

As for Canaan on Sunday, Aug. 7, I'm embarrassed to say I overslept and would not have made it up there in time. Let's hope the Canaan Police Department decides to make their "Run From The Law" an annual event so I get another shot.

What happened to Brentwood? (Not #124)

Well, it happens once in awhile. On Sunday, July 31, I drove out to the town of Brentwood (about 40 minutes) to take part in the "Kuiper Twin 5K," set to start at 8 a.m. at "Brentwood School" (actually Swasey Elementary School) on Middle Road. Simple enough. So I get out there, and the school is completely deserted. So is the town hall/police station. So is the town recreation center. So is everything. And there's no one to ask. Anywhere. Not even birds are chirping.

By the time 8 a.m. came and went, I had checked out all the likely spots, and found no race evidence: no cones in the road, no arrows chalked at intersections, no volunteers cautioning me to slow down for runners in the road. So I went and had breakfast in Exeter. Oh well! I'll have to pick up Brentwood (one of the remaining towns in Rockingham County) some other time.

I later found that yes, there had been a "Kuiper Twin 5K" race, but it took place on Saturday, July 30, not Sunday. D'oh! Lesson learned: check and double-check obscure road race listings before setting out, as more than a few times I've beed misled by inaccurate postings or what I refer to as SCC Syndrome. (The initials stand for "Self-Caused Confusion."

July 30: Dashing madly in Madbury (#123)

This morning it was out to Madbury, N.H. (about an hour's drive to the east) to bag this quiet Rockingham County town by running in a 5K-or-so trail race. Today's conditions: Relatively dry, hot in the sun, nice in the shade, with intermittent breezes to keep things reasonable rather than roastable. A great day for a race, considering what's possible for July in New Hampshire. (How often do I look at the weather map this time of year and find it's warmer here than in Miami?)

Going in, all I knew about Madbury is that it's home to one of our U.S. Senators, Jeanne Shaheen, and that the town is shaped like a thin slice of birthday cake. I've already run races in all the towns around it, but none had been held in Madbury - until today's trail race on the town-owned Kingman Farm property, which is across the road from the town's elementary school, where they've painted their own rendition of the town hall.

And the reason for the race is Chris Dunn and "Acidotic Racing," an adventure/endurance group (motto: Dare Mighty Things) that he started with his brother James in 2001. From the looks of the Web site, they organize a lot of wild events all over the place, including participation in the "New England Dirt Cup," a regional trail race competition. And they raise money for a lot of good causes.

I was surprised to see their members include a guy from my current hometown of Bedford, N.H. and also people from my original hometown of Nashua, N.H. Pictures show members running in snowshoes and across mountain ridgetops and biking in the fog and scaling sheer rock walls and one guy actually leaping a series of burning logs! Well, maybe someday. :)

Today's trail run (sponsored by GoLite Footwear!) seemed rather tame in comparison, but it attracted the faithful, as a very-much-fitter-than-the-usual-5K-road-race crowd was on hand. It being race day, I didn't expect much of a chance to speak to organizer Chris Dunn, but right off the bat I encountered his cheerful and energetic dad, who told me where I should park (around by the dumpsters near the school) and encouraged me to take advantage of the "brand spanking new" port-o-potty on hand, because I'd probably be only the 15th person ever to use it. (I did and it was pretty nice, for a portable toilet.)

One piece of great news about Madbury's Kingman Farm trail race: the entry fee was a "economy-friendly" $10, which came as welcome relief after seeing fees in some cases hitting $30 this year. Thanks! Proceeds were to go to the "Friends of the Earth, Sea, & Space Museum."

One bad piece of news, at least for me with my history of turning ankles, is that, yes, it was entirely a backwoods trail race. But that really means I just have to pay extra careful attention about where my feet fall from start to finish and not get too ambitious in terms of pace or whatever. Luckily, the trails that made up the course were all pretty well groomed.

About 75 people showed, which Chris Dunn told us all was way more than he expected, but it all went off without a hitch. I parked myself near the back (as usual) and off we went to a cowbell starting signal. Surprisingly, I found I had put myself too far back, and began passing folks when the trail allowed. We circled clockwise through shady forest, sometimes on paths and other times on old farm roads, down at first but then grinding up a long hill to emerge in open and working farmland. The corn wasn't quite as high as an elephant's eye (with apologies to Oscar Hammerstein), but it seemed to be coming along well enough.

(The photos here, including one of me, were taken by Steve Wolfe. At that point, I began to hear this horrible bird-like squawking coming from up ahead. Not sure what was going on, I began to feel like a cast member of Alfred Hitchcock's film 'The Birds.' What it was, I found, was the latest scarecrow replacement technology: automated recorded bird screeching triggered by motion, including passing runners, apparently. The real concern here, though, was that it was a long stretch to be in the sun, which is still pretty high in the sky this time of day in Thermador, as Napoleon would have called it.

But I made it back into the woods, entering a dizzying series of switchbacks that took the course up and over a large hill. Weird to see people running in other directions in the forest above and below you! I played tag with a pair of young men, who tended to fall behind on the uphills but powered by me on the downhills.

I had just said "Go for it!" to one of them as he passed me when he tripped on a log and took a classic tumble in the dirt. He wasn't hurt, but the excitement (and the finish line and cowbell looming somewhere below) prompted me to pour it on in the final switchbacks, flying over rocks and turns -- not the smartest thing for me to do, but I somehow survived.

One nice thing about the race was that in the middle of it, I got to hear the horn of Amtrak's Downeaster passenger train, which connects Boston with Portland, Maine. The line runs right through Madbury, and so it was nice to hear the train's flatulent toot echo through the woods as it sped through town while the race was in progress.

Finished in about 39 minutes, 49 out of 75 (Official result: 39:50, 48 out of 74) and was curious to see Chris Dunn's homemade "old school" results board -- something you see less and less of in this age of computerized results. Nice to see the old ways being kept alive! Afterwards, I did get a chance to say hi to Chris and tell him about this adventure, but couldn't stay for the awards and prizes because I had to hightail it back home.

Chris and all the organizers, thanks for a great race!

Marlow (#122) 5K: Happy 250th Birthday!

It was the biggest birthday cake I've seen all year. Unfortunately, it was made of plywood. But there it was, as big as a hot tub turned inside out, sitting on a wagon and waiting to be pulled by a tractor in the parade honoring the 250th birthday of Marlow, N.H., population about 750.

But first there was a 5K road race to run -- a rare one-time-only event, presumably, in a town I never expected to get. So I hauled myself the 90 minutes up to Marlow to bag it.

Marlow is another one of those towns I used to write about while working as a local news reporter in this part of the state. My big hurrah, I remember, was reporting the 50th anniversary of the Great Marlow Forest Fire of 1941, which started in Marlow and burned most of three towns, but miraculously missed Marlow's historic village area. (It's pictured above.)

Speaking of pictures, dopey me forgot to bring the camera today, which was too bad. Not only was there an over-sized plywood cake to photograph, but all sorts of other interesting things, too. How many chances will I have to get so close to an antique hand-operated road-grader?

Marlow is a classic New Hampshire upland rural town in that its history follows a common pattern: established just prior to the Revolution, most of it soon cleared as farmland or pastures, then steady population growth until the Civil War; after that, a slow decline as farms were gradually abandoned for better land beyond New England. Bypassed by the railroad, Marlow developed little real industry, so the population continued to shrink right through the Great Depression. Things finally started perking up after World War II, when better roads put the town within commuting distance of the bustling county seat -- in this case, Keene, N.H.

Marlow's history has one really unusual twist. In 1982, it was the birthplace of PC Connection, Inc., a mail-order computer supply business. The company grew like a weed -- so much so that new phone lines had to be run to the town to handle all the calls coming in.

Soon PC Connection moved into a dilapidated mansion, which the company renovated, restored, and eventually rechristened the Christmas Trees Inn, giving the community a highly visible showpiece (instead of an eyesore) right on Route 10, the main road into town.

PC Connection did right by Marlow, even building homes so employees could there, but it eventually had to move to larger (and less remote) facilities, on its way to becoming a $2 billion company. The inn is still used as a conference center, though it sports a prominent 'Christmas Tree Inn' sign. To prevent confusion, a permanent NO VACANCY sign has been added, which lends a strange aura to it. Not as blatant as KEEP AWAY!, but carries the same feeling.

It's not the only building in Marlow that sports an unusual sign. Jones Hall, where we registered for the road race, carries this placard: BUILT 1792, MOVED 1845, ALTERED 1892, GIVEN 1908.

While waiting for the start, I explored Marlow's impressive war monument, which anchors a triangle-shaped park in front of Jones Hall. Dating from the 'World War' of 1914-18 (no one expected a second one at the time), it features a lifesize doughboy atop a large pedestal, on which are carved names of all Marlow residents who answered their nation's call.

The monument's roll call actually provides a rough snapshot of the town's declining fortunes. A total of 50 names are listed as Revolutionary War veterans (including my favorite, Zebidee Whittemore); then 19 in the War of 1812. This is followed by 44 for the Civil War, then just eight for World War I. (No mention is made of the Spanish-American War.) A plaque added later lists 39 residents as World War II veterans.

What about the road race? A nice and mostly level 5K, including a loop right through a historic cemetery, which if nothing else serves as a good reminder of where we're all headed -- the ultimate finish line. Entrance fee: just $10, yay! Small field, about two dozen runners, plus about same number of walkers. Warm and humid, though not nearly as bad as what we've had recently (temps of 100+) in this part of the world.

Felt tired during warm-up run, and draggy for first half of the race. Not sure why, but the weather is a factor for sure. Sun and humidity slow me down. Even so, surprised to finish in my best 5K time so far this season, breaking the 30-minute barrier. Completed in 29:27. No idea about placement but at least I know I wasn't last.

Had to leave before other town birthday activities took place, including the parade with the birthday cake. My favorite on the schedule: the "town picture" scheduled for 1:15 p.m. at Jones Hall. Say cheese, Marlow!