Colorado Runner Racing Series

I didn't think the flying-downhill lessons of the Greenland Trail 8-miler would come in handy for a 5k race, but little did I know that about two-thirds of the Cottonwood Classic 5k course spins gradually downhill. Not only that, but there were some groovy fast corners, too.

Cottonwood was the sixth race in the 16-race Colorado Runner Racing Series, and I'd taken a risk by missing number 5, the Colorado Half-Marathon in Fort Collins a couple of weeks ago. Luckily, I went into Cottonwood still leading the Male 55-59 overall points table and I was gunning for an 18:30.

Who’d have thought that a set of 100-metre repeats would be perfect preparation for a hilly 8-mile trail race?

But that’s the way it turned out. For the first time since cross-country days in England, I found myself flying past people on the downhill stretches of the Greenland Trail race – and there were a lot of them.

It's been hard to follow the progress of the Colorado Runner Racing Series, the 16-event pan-state series that results in an unofficial nomination of the Colorado runners of the year. But now Derek Griffiths, publisher of sponsors Colorado Runner magazine, has revamped the reporting of the series to bring ASAP updates of the latest standings AND individual race results to the Colorado Runner website.

I had a weird moment at the start of the Sharin' O' the Green 5k. I lined up in the front row, the gun went off -- and a yellow shoe came bouncing through the ranks. Now, blame the fact that I'd "just" got off the plane back from England or whatever, but for some strange reason I thought it was mine...

No kidding, the oatmeal got factored into my pre-race visualisation so well that I really was expecting to be handed a warm bowl of porridge at the halfway feeding station!

The volunteers were first shocked, then fell about laughing when I spurned their cups of water and asked for oatmeal, so anyone behind me hoping for a drink was plumb out of luck.