2012 Eno Equalizer

Handicapped start

Yesterday was the Carolina Godiva Track Club Eno Equalizer, the 5th race in the Winter Series.
This race is a team event, with a fairly simple premise: The team who has all 3 members cross the finish first wins. In other words, your team finishing time is when the 3rd team member finishes..

To make it more fair, each runner is given a head start, or "handicap" according to their abilities. This is the "Equalizer" part. To add an element of strategy, this time handicap can be traded among team members to help balance the times.

Professor Richard Smith, Race Director, tries desperately to explain the rules

Unfortunately, this is more complexity than most runners can grasp early on a Sunday morning, and there was some confusion on the faces of the 58 runners gathered there.

Almost no one plummeted to their death off the side of the swinging bridge

The race is about 3.7 miles, on the Cox Mountain trail in Eno River State Park.
Originally, I scoffed at the idea of something so small being a "mountain", but that was before I tried to run up it. Then I was regretting not bringing any climbing gear.

The lower elevations of Cox Mountain,
before you get to the glacier.

My team failed to get a single person across the line before the winning time of 23:21. I think we really got screwed on the handicaps.

Shannon took lots of photos which are here. Because of a high mileage week, she ended up DFL, with the timing folks wondering where she was. All captured in this video here.

Maybe the only race you will run where you pass
a sign saying "no running"

With 2 hard trail races in two days my legs were beaten to a pulp, and I desperately needed a rest.

So we immediately headed over to a nearby section of Mountains to Sea trail and ran another 8 miles.

Surprisingly, my legs don't hurt too bad today... as long as keep them perfectly still.