Race Report: 2007 Living History Farms XC, Part 1

6,882 cross country runners couldn't go wrong, right? That was the official count at Saturday morning's Living History Farms race, and judging by the endless throngs of eager and colorfully dressed people who showed up, I'd say their count was fairly accurate. With nearly ideal weather conditions, we again experienced the yearly mother-of-all-races and clearly the unique end to each of our running seasons for this year. I've said it before and I'll say it again ... this is definitely THE race to try once in your lifetime.

As there had been a few rumors going around that last year's record of ~5,000 runners was in serious jeopardy of being toppled (more like mangled, as we would soon come to find out), I wisely decided to arrive at the race site ahead of whatever crowds may decide to appear. Although getting into LHF seemed to be rather smooth and efficient, you could already see the multitudes of people who must have had the same idea. Parking was already filling up rather quickly and thoughts of a quick and clean exit strategy was slowly beginning to diminish. None the less, after finding a nice spot to park under a tree near the main road out, I grabbed my winter hat and gloves and made my way down to the registration building. It was just a bit chilly out, I'm guessing around 38 degrees, but the absence of wind and precipitation already seemed to add to the growing excitement in the air.

Entering the registration area, I quickly located my number on the wall and made my way through the line to receive my race number and yearly long-sleeved shirt. The shirts they create for this race are awesome and tend to be a coveted item among many a runner's wardrobe, including that of me and my wife. I have a few in my closet at the moment, and wear them with pride during the colder weather months. After taking a moment to pin my race number to the front of my shirt (which just so happened to be my race shirt from the 2005 event), I headed back out the door and into the crowds growing outside. Having made prior plans to join up and run with a few friends from work, I picked my way through the swelling masses of costumed individuals, of which I saw: Elvis, Dolly Parton, women with pink tu-tus, and men with shark heads. You can't not call this race interesting. Passing the shoeless loincloth man, I found our meeting spot with 40 minutes to go. Within a few minutes, my friend Ryan (also an adventure racing buddy of mine) showed up and we began discussing the record breaking amount of racers sure to show. We both had the gut feeling that the race course was likely to be a bit slower than years past, with all the glut of runners squeezing down wooded paths and across muddy streambeds together. When the rest of our crew showed up, we slowly made our way down to the starting chute and joined the thousands of runners already waiting. Though we normally fight our way to spots near the front of the chute, this morning we were found ourselves at the very back of the pack. This suited us fine, as one of our members was a LHF "newbie" and another had just recovered from foot surgery. Our strategy was just to have a good time and enjoy the race. Today there would be no PR, just the thrill of a pleasant run with friends over hill and dale.

As the national anthem finished up (we actually couldn't hear it from where we were standing), the gun quickly sounded. You could see the front of the pack begin to surge forward. Of course, that surge to begin wouldn't reach us for over another two more minutes as nearly 7,000 runners began to lumber their way onto the 6.8 mile cross country course...

to be continued ...