Welcoming the Unknown
To the trails, comrades!
In the hardest moments of a race, when your lungs are burning and your heart is pounding out of your ears and your legs feel like cast iron and in the edges of your vision you see another runner’s shadow sneaking up on yours and all the sudden there’s another ragged rhythm of oxygen intake sitting right on your shoulder and you tell yourself they sound worse than you do but then again you sound pretty rough yourself, don’t you, but you try not to think about that right now and you stand up a little straighter and up your tempo and try to focus every ounce of energy you have into keeping your shadow just one step ahead of the faceless form nipping at your heels… that’s when you find out what kind of runner you are.
I’m not talking about Shea Aquilano’s 33rd-place finish at Worlds. I’m talking about my experience trying to hold off the 9-year-old boy in K-Mart New Balances who passed me hard 3 miles into a rural 3.5 mile race on Saturday night. Shea probably wouldn’t have let that kid pass her. The kid probably wouldn’t have been within striking distance, anyway. But that’s neither here nor there. It’s fine. I’m fine.
Notre Dame Running Club’s1 Shea Aquilano was one of six women representing Team USA in the Long Course division of the World Mountain Running Championship. At 21, she was also the youngest on the team by a margin of about a decade and the youngest on Team USA as a whole (not counting the U20 team).
Despite her lack of seniority, she finished well ahead of 70+ other runners (over 50 of whom DNFed) over a mountainous, technical 86k course. The women’s Long Course team finished 4th, and Team USA’s women finished 4th overall.
I’m stoked to have raced in the 86k long trail race with 6500m of climbing thanks to the help of team staff, family, friends and everyone else who lended support or words of encouragement. Men’s team 2nd and women’s team 4th in the world! So proud of everyone who toed the line and welcomed the unknown.
As always, if it feels a little crazy and sounds too difficult, you’re probably on the right path. Keep going.— Shea Aquilano, writing about the race on Instagram
When the dust had settled, Shea had finished 33rd in the world, completing the course in 13 hours, 9 minutes, and 58 seconds.
Before the race, I raised the possibility that Shea Aquilano might be the only active NIRCA member to qualify for a world championship while still running club. While I have no way to check my work on this, I feel pretty confident that she’s GOTTA be the first club runner to finish 33rd in the world while running club2.
Shea represents the current competitive pinnacle of club running’s Ultra/Trail scene3, but there’s a not-insignificant segment of the club population who — bored or burnt-out on the track — have turned their attention to the trails.
Club on the Trails
So many of the runners who compete in NIRCA races are, in one way or another, ready to move on from the Track & XC they’ve been running since high school. Either they struggle with time comparisons to their former selves or they had an old coach who got in their head or maybe they’re just tired of running in damn circles all the time. Many of them turn to the roads, but plenty other turn to the trails.
On this week’s podcast, Wyatt and I discussed (among other things, including Shea’s performance at Worlds) NIRCA’s trail scene, why I think there ought to be a club trail running championship, and what that might look like.
Look for that discussion on Friday’s episode of the Reasonably Speedy podcast, and if you haven’t already, follow the pod on Spotify:
That’s it for this week. Now all that’s left is for you to share Reasonably Speedy with a friend (maybe two) and to go crush some summer miles (maybe on the trails).
Have fun and stay hydrated, folks. Club or die.
Special thanks to Mike Mcmonagle (@shitinthewoods) for today’s cover photo)
So, the thing is, Shea graduated in May, but since she qualified and was selected for the team as an active member of NDRC, I’m counting it.
Though, as a graduate of W&M’s Team Blitz, I am contractually obligated to mention that our own Sabrina Little won a world silver medal in the Road 100 Mile a scant 4 years after graduating
Yes, I know these are actually distinct, different scenes, but we’re talking about distinguishing two subcultures of a subculture of a subculture here, so how bout you get off your high horse, buster?