I registered for the Helderberg to Hudson half marathon a month before I ran the Syracuse Half Marathon last November, before I learned of two local races—the Earth Day half marathon and the Good Samaritan 5K—scheduled to run on the same weekend. As COVID would have it, I was able to run all three in one form or another, but the road to the Altamont Fairgrounds near Albany was a tortuous one indeed.
H2H was to be the second of three half marathons spanning four weeks from April to May, starting with the Skunk Cabbage Classic in Ithaca and culmination with the Pittsburgh marathon in early May. I finished the Lake Effect half marathon in February, joined an organized training group shortly afterward, and entered March with good form and the aspiration of breaking two hours at one of these half marathons.
With a gradual descent from Helderberg to the Hudson River, Helderberg to Hudson seemed like the best candidate for a new personal best—until the lockdowns began. The Skunk Cabbage Classic was cancelled in March; the massive Pittsburgh marathon, with its potential crowd of 30,000 runners, quickly followed suite. ARE Productions, the organization running H2H, took a different approach: they delayed the race to August 29, your humble author’s birthday.
Understandably, details as to how they would pull this off, if they even could, remained scarce. In the meantime, I ran a 2:07 half on the pancake-flat Erie Canal Trail in March followed by a 2:12 on the hillier Earth Day course. I finished that with energy to spare and might have been able to top my earlier personal best.
Then my left knee started to ache. Most of the time it was bearable, but I knew I was pushing my luck and began to back off my training.
And it showed. We resumed our group runs in late June. A trio of us were relative newbies, having started running last year, and we were all fairly evenly matched. But as July progressed, I gradually began lagging a bit on some of our runs, and hill work, particularly the descents, became unpleasant.
I attempted a couple of ten miles runs a few weeks ago. Both ended badly, as my right hip and knee tightened up. I ended up quite literally limping my way home. I suspect that I was favoring my left knee, and in so doing threw off my gait. I now ran the risk of developing runner’s knee in both legs, so I cut back even further.
The upshot is that I drove to Albany with real doubts about whether my fitness and my injuries would allow me to finish the marathon. This was a far cry from where I was in March and April, but I was determined to give it a shot.
It wasn’t practical for ARE to utilize the original course, a point to point run on a trail. The relatively narrow course would make social distancing difficult, and busing several hundred runners to the start line was too risky, so the venue shifted to the Alatmont Fairgrounds. The course now consisted of a scenic loop in the Heldernerg mountains—and a fair amount of climbing.
Last year’s inaugural edition attracted over 2,000 runners. This year’s event was considerably smaller: around 300 in-person, with others running virtually and the rest presumably deferring to 2021 or 22. The plan was to send us off in nine waves of 40 or so runners at five-minute intervals. Rather than starting in groups, two runners from each group would leave every ten seconds, thus ensuring spreading runners out even further.
This was essential not only for social distancing, but also because of the fact that we were running on some busy roads with line of traffic cones giving us a narrow lane, and bunching up would cause us to queue up.
All of this came almost came to naught when the remnants of Hurricane Laura were forecast to influence a front over the Great Lakes, raising the possibility of severe thunderstorms for most of the day. I’d brought my waterproof shoes, but lightning would quickly put an end to the event.
First COVID, now a hurricane. Twenty twenty just keeps giving.
We woke to rain, but as luck would have it, the worst of the storms wouldn’t’t hit until later, and there was the possibility that we might be racing under clearing skies. ARE and several hundred runners anxious to race an event in-person dodged a meteorological bullet.
After a fantastic bagel breakfast courtesy of Bagels and Bakes, Traci and I drove to Altamont an hour before the race began. CNY (now USA) racing was a familiar and welcome presence at the events, and while Traci plied their wares, I walked over to my starting corral.
There were nine designated starting corrals, each with its designated parking lot, gathering area, and porta potty. As each of the waves was limited to 40 runners, there was ample room for physical distancing, and mask compliance among the runners and volunteers was generally quite good. This is what needs to happen if we want to continue these live events until the advent of a vaccine.
Rather than starting in small waves, runners in each group were assigned letters, each of which corresponded to a cone near the starting line. Two would line up, one on each side, and move up at 10 second intervals as the pairs ahead of them started. In addition to organizing races, ARE times events, and the chip timing made the complex logistics of this structure work.
Rain continued to fall as our group’s start time approached. I’d brought two pairs of shoes for the weekend: Saucony Triumph 17 and New Balance 880GTXs, the latter being waterproof. Neither was as light as I’d have liked, but I dreaded the thought of running 13.1 miles with wet feet, so I opted for the 880s with their Gore Tex liners. They had served me well in several wet and slushy races last fall and winter, and I suspected that the additional weight would slow me down too much; my sore legs and diminished training would do that.
I started next to a young woman who wished me luck as we started—and pulled away from me with ease. I passed a few runners ahead of me, was passed by faster folks who started behind me, and settled into a what I thought was a comfortable pace—which was actually around 9 minutes, a bit faster than my usual half pace.
Miles 1-5
I felt good after the first climb, a short, moderately steep hill, and began having delusions of topping last spring’s PR—or at least matching the 2:12 from Earth Day, but two miles in the all-too-familiar sting in my right IT band signaled trouble. Something similar had happened at the Thousand Islands 10K the previous week and I was able to run through it with a decent time, but with 11 miles to go, this didn’t bode well.
Nonetheless, I held a steady pace, I had a decent cadence, and the cooler, wet weather helped. Until it didn’t. The rain stopped at some point during the first hour I was out on the road.
I started catching and passing a few runners from earlier groups; the course was narrow out of necessity, so this was tricky with traffic. I arrived at the 5 mile mark with a time of 49:00 minutes and a pace of 9:48. So far, so good.
Miles 5-10
I gently began to ease up to save energy for the final stretch of the course. We had seen the final climb on the course, another relatively short but steep hill two miles from the finish, and I knew the final two miles had some rollers; the last thing I wanted was to burn out with a few miles to go or to exacerbate my knee problems.
I was lucky to avoid a delay(or unlucky enough to miss a chance for a rest) at the 10K mark, where a lengthy train held up a small group of runners. I trotted past the aid station and began counting the rail cars as they sailed by. I no longer had any illusions about matching or breaking personal records or equaling past times. My thoughts were of maintaining my pace, which was already flagging slightly, over the next seven miles, so the train was a minor nuisance for me. The runners stopped at the crossing were likely losing chunks of time, and I could see their frustration expressed in their impatient body language.
The final cars passed and the gates raised just as I slowed to join them. The obstacle removed, the group forged on and stretched out on the course.
We turned left onto Ostrander Road. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the start of our second significant climb, a gentle, mile long hill with just enough of a grade to throw my cadence off. This isn’t what caused my ultimate problems. Rather, it was the descent, particularly a steep grade down to the next turn onto Route 146, that really changed the race for me. Climbs aren’t kind to sore knees, but gravity is particularly harsh on the descents. I descended gingerly, but the ache next to my right knee quickly became more pronounced.
Fortunately, the next 2.5 miles were flat, allowing me to recover to an extent. My cadence was still smooth and although sore, my knees were cooperative.
I hit the 10 mile mark at 1:41:42 with a pace of 10:10. I was below my PR and Earth Day Paces, but ahead of where I was in the Syracuse Half.
Miles 10-13.1
My pace was down, but I was coasting toward the finish—and the final climb, or climbs, as the last two miles had very little in the way of flat terrain. I hit the last of the larger hills with just over two miles to go. I ground my way up, but I just couldn’t recover when I reached to top. The final couple of miles with their rollers became a slog, and it didn’t help that the sun was out and the air had become heavy with humidity.
At this point, my pace wasn’t much above that of a fast walk. The final rise to the finish line seemed interminable, but then I crossed the sensor and it was done.
It took me just over 35 minutes to cover the final 5K of the course. Part of that was the terrain. Most of it was my tight IT, which continued to make itself known for the rest of the day. I finished with a time of 2:16:50, well off my Earth Day pace. Most of the time lost was in the final 5K, but this was a hilly course run in humid conditions and I wasn’t in the best of shape, so I took it.
ARE put on a fine race given this year’s contingencies. The boxed meals provided by Bountiful Bread were excellent, the giveaways, which included a shirt, a lightweight hoody, and a clever compass medal, were top notch, and efforts taken to keep the 300 participants safe made for an enjoyable experience.
With this race, I managed to complete the trifecta of April 18 events either by running the courses or competing in-person. I’ll always do my best to support local races, but I would like to return to Albany for another edition of the Helderberg to Hudson race. With luck, we’ll be back to the original course next year.
Now that I’ve nursed my way through this race, I’m taking an unwelcome but necessary break from running for a week or two to give my left knee and right IT band a much needed rest.
Location: Altamont, NY
Website: Helderberg to Hudson
Cost: $80
Swag: Shirt, hoody, medal, post race food
Events: Half marathon
Field: 297 in-person; 214 virtual
Result: 201/297@2:16:50; 10:27; 13/17
Shoe: New Balance 880GTX