2010 Bradbury Bruiser

Today I ran the Bradbury Bruiser, which is the third of three trail races at Bradbury Mountain State Park. And it was a lot of fun. It's a 12 mile very twisty, very turny, mostly single track race. There was a multiple switch backs. There are sections where you can get dizzy if you are going too quickly. And it just takes a little bit of work to find the trail. It's very well marked, so it's easy enough to do but you got to be very careful that you don't fall and hurt yourself. Very competitive. This year I've managed to break the course record, but I was seventh overall. There were six people that ran faster than me. The winner was Kevin Tilton, who just had amazing race. He ran it in a something a little over 82 minutes, and that just kind of blew everybody away. The start of the race you have a very wide section, but only a few hundred yards before you take a hard left on to the narrow single track, and you follow that up and go around the outside of the park. Then once you get over towards the western side of the park, part. Once you get back to the western side of the park, you start doing some of the trail you might have done in the Bradbury Scuffle which was first of the 3 race series back in July, and you will come out of the Fox East Trails. Head up the snow mobile trail to the Gin Trail and you'll follow that down to fox west. And the end of the race is on a section trail called the "O" trail, which is a very small area but its got over 2 miles of just really twisty turny. You'll be running right next to somebody this literally a mile or two behind you. And sadly, I was actually passed on the “O” Trail, which I didn't think was gonna happen. I thought it was gonna be one of my stronger parts of the race. But I've managed to finish 7th overall, it was good enough to win a series. I haven't seen the final results yet, but I think I won by about 5 minutes total. I had about a 3 minute lead going into the race over second place, Mike Dowing. And I managed to come home with quite a bit of stuff. I've got this sweat shirt here for running all 3 races, the “Bradbury Bad ***” shirt. And I also got a really cool t-shirt just as a regular participant, and I got a plaque and an award certificate for... the plaque for winning the series. And the certificate for getting first in my age group today. And as prizes, I've managed to get a Nathan Waist Pack Belt Water Bottle Holster, which is pretty cool. I've been wanting to try one of those out, just to give it a good attempt. The only things I've ever used for that is a fuel-belt up to this point, so hopefully this works a little bit better for me. And I also won for the series win I got a case of beer. Smuttynose is one of the race sponsors. I also got a season pass for all the main state park, which is really cool. Trail Monster Running, I've managed to get first place in the race today, so we got a couple of cases of beer for that too. So of the two cases of beer I wound up with at the end, I've managed to come home with a little less that 3 quarters of the case, and I shared out most of the beer with the other trail monster which is what you really should do in a team race. But it was a lot of fun. If you are going to be in Maine next summer, I highly recommend this series. Especially the Bradbury Scuffle, which is a great introductory trail race that just about anybody should be able to do. If you can do a 10K on the road, then you can definitely run the scuffle. The other 2 races are little bit more challenging and definitely a little more technical. But they are also a lot of fun, and I'm glad that I finally got to run more than just the Scuffle this year.