Tuesday Night Races

Tonight I participated in my third Tuesday Night Race, an amazing Anchorage community institution, now in its 39th year. Every Tuesday night, the city holds a "race" at a different trail somewhere in the Anchorage vicinity. My first race was at Chugiak High School and through Beach Lake Park, last week was in Kincaid Park (the giant wonderful park at the end of the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail), and this week was at Bartlett High School at the edge of the air force base. When the weather is good (i.e. not actually raining), the races draw upwards of 500 people. There are three leagues--the Lightning league is for hardcore competetive runners, the Farm league for low key runners like me, and the Munchkin league for the little ones. It's really fun to see so many people come out--tons of kids, dogs, and strollers. (It is a little demoralizing to get passed by a sprinting 8 year old at 4k, though.)

The courses are always beautiful, and challenging in a variety of ways. At Chugiak, the first stretch took us through an ankle-deep swamp! This week, it was cold, rainy, and muddy (Kate, my personal trainer, was successful in convincing me that we'd be so hardcore if we went, despite the weather!). They've all been hilly--last week even had some near-vertical San Francisco-style hills. The Farm league courses are supposed to be between 3 and 7.5k, but last week, something got a little screwy with the flags that tell us where to go, and the Farm-ers ran about 9k.

Here is an interesting story about the race in the Anchorage Daily News. Every week, the paper publishes the names of the top 20 runners in the Farm and Lightning leagues. They also post the race results on the Tuesday Night Race webpage--bonus points for spotting my alias!! And no making fun of my running times. Hills! Mud! Rain!!

UPDATE: They misspelled my pseudo-first-name on the 9/26 roster. Look at the two previous ones or focus on the last name :)