Fit 360: Tuckfest 2022

Friday, December 30, 2022

Tuckfest 2022

TRAINING LEAD-UP

Wednesday, April 27:

HDT Baseline / PATHFINDER Endex stats, including the run and ruck. For the ruck, 2 miles with 30# in the shorty rucker v3, wearing MACV1s, in 27:44.

TUCKFEST

I turned around from being at the Sandlot Jacksonville Fitness Festival, over to the Tuckfest Outdoor Competition and Live Music festival at the USNWC in Charlotte. With one entry fee, you get to participate in as many competitions from a variety of sports, as you'd like. There's bouldering, kayaking, SUP, running, biking, scavenger hunts, etc. I participated in 2018, but I wasn't able to attend the past couple of years due to conflicts. They give medals to the top three overall in each competition. Since there are so many competitions, spreading out the field, they don't do age group awards.

Night 4 Miler

My goal is to collect as many medals as I can. My first event for this year's was the Night Trail Race 4 miler. Trail Races require a bit more strategy than road races, since getting caught in congestion can kill your race and make it impossible to make up any gaps between you and the leader. The shorter the race, the less room there is for errors, and the less time there is to make up for any issues from bottlenecks.

It got off to a good start. About halfway through, it was me and one other girl in the lead. She had headlamp issues, maybe a light that was too dim, which slowed her down. It made reading the signs harder. Colored arrows show the way, but there are arrows of many colors, laid out for the different races, so you have to be able to discern colors to know which way to go.

I helped out by yelling out the way to go, once I did pass her. Eventually, she caught back up, so we ran together. She didn't seem to be straining as much as I was to keep the pace. When we got to the end, I tried to get her to pass me, since she seemed to be the faster runner, and it was only headlamp issues that gave her problems, but she declined, maybe because she was glad for the help. It's the same medal regardless of your place, so it didn't matter all that much, but it was kind of a cool moment of comeraderie at a race.

4 miles in 36:42, wearing Salomon S-Lab trail running shoes and using an Ultraspire waist-mounted light with lots of lumens. I like the waist-mounted light because you have better depth perception when the light isn't stemming from your eyes, because you can see proper shadows.

Quarter Marathon

My next event took place the following morning. I had used up energy the previous night. Looking back, if my main goal was to rack up medals, all I needed to really do was the bare minimum speed required to achieve third, but I was in a racing mood last night.

I was therefore not 100% the following morning. There was more competition, too. They only do placements for the chipped runners, though, so although I wasn't third female generally, I was third from among the chipped runners. 26.2/4 miles in 1:07:01. This was harder.

Another 5K

There were other races throughout the day. There was also a "Marathon Challenge" where you do enough races to accumulate a marathon worth of running. I debated about whether I wanted to stay and do more races, or stay and spectate some of the other competitions, or go home and rest up for tomorrow, whatever I ended up doing tomorrow. You didn't have to pre-register for any of the races... you just show up, so they were all options.

I decided to tack on another 5K in 24:54, done slowly, to make it such that I only had a half marathon left to do, which I could cover the next morning.

Hanging Out

I rested in my car after the 5K. It was hot. I put up a sun shield, using a contractor bag.