Cobblestone Classic

Race Report.
Yesterday morning I ran the Cobblestone Classic 5 mile run. Tag line "Where Tanks Once Tread" (To find out why, read the Tangent below). A Five mile course from Patch Barracks to Panzer Barracks along Panzerstraße.

Warning: Long Historical Tangent Ahead.
(A tip of the hat to Blunoz for format)

Patch Barracks was originally called Kurmärker Kaserne and was constructed starting in about 1936, by, you guessed it, our good old German friends...


Panzer Barracks (originally Panzer Kaserne) was built around the same time. Kurmärker Kaserne was the home for the 7th Panzer Regiment...


...it had the headquarters area, offices, barracks, support facilities and the like...


...and Panzer Kaserne had the training area and shooting ranges for the Panzers.

To get from Kurmärker to Panzer Kaserne, they needed a road. Just any old road wouldn't do. Tank treads tend to be a little rough on asphalt, and they'll turn dirt roads to mud. So they came up with a solution:

Cobblestones

Great for tanks not so good for knees and ankles!

The bases were needed to support the newly re-arming German military during the run up to the Second World War. They played a supporting role in the military re-occupation of the Rhineland.

Kurmärker Kaserne didn't make it out of the war too well:(Nice bullet holes above)

The combined USAF and RAF gave it a bit of a plastering.

The 7th Panzer Regiment didn't do that well either. It surrendered in Tunisia and finished the war in POW camps back in the U.S.

(Source note: all of the above photos came from a EUCOM history brief about Patch Barracks. I cannot attest to the status of copyright on any of them).

End Tangent.

This is at least the 3rd running of the Cobblestone classic (which I know only b/c I saw a 2006 Cobblestone Classic T-shirt).

I've fallen off the wagon the last week. I did 11 miles last Saturday, and due to an equipment malfunction (sock position) ended up with some nasty blisters on my right foot. I ran again on Monday, only 4.5 miles and really regretted it. So I took the rest of the week off. (Which has some implications for my half-marathon training plan but in the short term really made my legs feel heavy when the race started. But it did give my blisters enough time to heal which was really what I needed.)

The race started alright. I made a conscious decision to start nearer the front this time. In past races I've spent a lot of time and effort at the beginning of the run playing dodge 'ems with slower runners, walkers and stroller pushers starting near the front. That worked out better than my past starts. (No, there were no starting guides or any order at all really to the start. Just "line-up and go". Very un-Armylike.)

The problem was I felt miserable pretty much from the start. Legs heavy, lungs weak. To make things worse the course was not easy. Pretty much immediately after leaving Patch Barracks it enters the woods, where it remains till the end, so the scenery is nice.

But there are the cobblestones. And there are the hills. It's pretty much just a series of hills for the entire 5 miles. With a nice long one at the beginning. (see the profile below). I'm not a hill running champion, I tend to slow down quickly, and get very slow as they go on.

I did have the advantage of having run almost all of the course before. I've explored most of the woods through which the course wound during my weekend long runs, except for the last half mile or so.

Needless to say, my "good start" stopped about mile 1 1/4 when the first real uphill began. I continued to trudge up the hill passing the 2 mile mark near the top of the hill at 16:16, a bit of quick and easy mental gym: 8:08 pace. Not exactly scorching.

Finally at the top, I sped up a bit as the course leveled out for a little bit and then began a slow relatively steady descent. I was able to maintain that pace, running next to a co-worker who had a GPS watch. It said we were running sub 6:00 pace. It lied. No way. We were holding an on/off conversation, which I cannot do at a sub 6:00 pace. Besides, we were maintaining pace for waaaaay too long for me to be sub 6:00. Even counting the downhill.

If you look at the elevation profile below, it was the second to last hill that really did me in (the one that starts at mil 4.3 or so). I think I pushed the pace a little too hard going up, trying to run with the same guy. Consequently, I didn't have much left.


To make matters worse, I started hearing a slapping footfall behind me. Getting closer. And closer. Soon enough, a scrawny little 11 year old boy just screams by. Very disheartening. About 5 miles in and passed by an 11 year old.

Then came the coup de grace to my race. Where was the finish? I just felt I had to be nearing the 5 mile end. We turned off the main trail that I'd run before onto a side trail I was unfamiliar with. As we curved around in the woods, I was really needing that 5 mile end point. My legs felt dead. My lungs weren't much better.

Then around the corner!

(Commence inner dialogue)

A sign! 5 miles!!! Joyous day!

But...wait....where ...(pray tell) is the finish line??? Refreshments????? The END??!!!!

Ahhh, [expletive deleted] race organizers!
Can't even advertise the real [expletive deleted] length of the [expletive deleted] race!
Yeah, but they sure can find a [expletive deleted] hill to make us run up.
Must have been a [expletive deleted] Marine again. [expletive deleted]

(End dialogue)

Well, eventually I did see the end, around a corner up a hill (of course).

Finish time: just over 42 minutes. Pace actually slower than my PB 10k time.

But honestly, with the hills, I'll take it. And it was fun. Just wish they'd said it was 5.something miles, not "5 miles".