USA Clydesdale & Filly Racing Federation


USACFRF is an organization that supports big fit athletes that enjoy
competing in running, cycling and multisport events......we are an eclectic group made up of recreational athlete's & the very serious athlete:>)

USACFRF promotes competition of all abilities. USACFRF works to promote sports for the common man & woman...the Olympics, Iron Man & World Championships are NOT on our radar screen, your local church or pub race is...we are runners, cyclists & swimmers 1st and Clydesdales and Fillies 2nd!!!

2007

Clydesdale Open 226lbs.+ Winner

Jeff Durso-Finley
Lawrenceville, New Jersey

-Start-

-Close to Finish-

Jeff's Post Race Report
For some inexplicable reason, I decided that running a fall marathon might be a good idea, so when Santa Clarita suddenly advertised itself as the USACFRF National Championships, I decided to go for it, even though I had been training for the first week of December. (The National Championships were supposed to be in Tuscon, but that either fell through, or was a misprint. I’m not sure exactly what the deal was, but Santa Clarita suddenly was on the schedule, so I decided to go for it, even though it fell in the middle of a pretty busy time in the office.)

Getting up at 4:00 am for the flight was something of a drag as you might imagine, and all I could think of when I landed was the classic Warren Zevon line about LA, “They say this place is evil, [but] that’s not why I stay…” Even so, the flight out here was relatively smooth, the check-in and weigh-in went off with no problem, and I had a chance to drive around the city / town, which was pretty nice all in all. Well laid out city center with plenty of things to do, mountains all around. Definitely a nice place..

The race course included lots of trails and wasn’t particularly hilly acc’d to the elevation chart, though that would prove to be a little misleading. There was a 5k and ½ marathon that went off at the same time, though thankfully the 5K was in a completely different direction.

7:00 am start, but I was on East Coast time, with the time change for daylight savings, so it was a little surreal. I felt rested even so and the race went off exactly on time. First 5-6 miles went off exactly like clockwork and I kept to the pace I had decided to run. The first sign of trouble cropped up during miles 6-7-8. It seemed like I was struggling a little to keep pace, which made no sense considering the temperature, the course, and how my training had gone. As I came around on mile 9, the course doubled back on the other side of the canyon, and I figured out why it was more difficult than I thought – the whole trail on that side of the canyon was slightly uphill, but the topography was so deceptive that I didn’t notice it when I was running. Great – I just blew out plenty of energy by accident.

I throttled down dramatically and by the 11th mile I was back to feeling good and running strong. Enter Issue #2. I started down an incline to go under an overpass and felt a pop on my thigh. I shuffled along for a bit hoping it would go away, but no luck. I had pulled my groin. Not horribly, but there was no mistaking it. I didn’t have to stop right there, thankfully, but the damage was done as I hit the next incline. No push whatsoever. I had no chance going up the hills – it was almost a dead stop.

The course ended up being much more hilly than I thought, but it popped up in weird ways. There were lots of little steep overpasses and on ramps off and on to the trails. The roads weren’t long, but sharply up. I just couldn’t do them. Plus, there were these things called “paseos,” which were pedestrian overpasses basically, but again, they went sharply up and were everywhere. Every time I felt like I could get a little rhythm, one would show up and I would struggle uphill.

So, I soldiered on using basically one leg to push; Not much I could do otherwise. By the time I hit 16, I was dead from trying to run on one leg, and by the time I hit 18, I was done for good it seemed. I simply stopped hitting the mile splits on my watch, because every time I looked down I had that crushing feeling like the one that you get when you get targeted by a State Trooper’s radar and then you look at your speedometer – “it’s going to be a big number” flashes through your mind. By the time I got to 20, I had a flash they might take me off the course, because I was just walking and limping. Quite honestly, I was thinking about the race report and getting ready to put in how I had let down the USACFRF in the race.

For those of you who have bonked in a marathon, you know what was going through my mind: misery, despair, self-doubt, self-loathing. All that good stuff where you question everything that happened in your training, doubts and frustrations going right back all the way to your parentage.

Then, something interesting happened. The course doubled back on itself right before 21 and I saw I guy that I was sure was in my weight category. He had blown past me at 18 when I was doing the ugly shuffle, causing the cascade of ill will I just described. He was struggling a bit and I could see that I was only maybe 500 meters behind him or so. What the hell. I couldn’t feel any worse, so maybe I’ll go after him and see what happens.

Over the course of the next two miles or so, I blew out whatever was left to catch up to him, and was surprised when I hit 23 and was right behind him. The only problem was that it wasn’t the guy I was thinking of when I first saw him. This one was likely in my weight class, if not close, but not the one I was after. *That* one was another 400 meters ahead – I could see him running and shuffling with his running buddy.

Christ. Here we go again.

Over the course of the next mile and one half, I went after him, too, and once again, I was surprised when we came to a turnaround and I was pretty close to him. They had stopped to walk for a bit up a small uphill, so I stayed back 15-20 yards or so and walked as well. As we approached the turnaround and they started talking to the course monitor who was making sure that the chips went off, and I took the turn and took off.

The rest of the race was pretty miserable all in all, as I figured that every step I ran that he didn’t put more distance between us, but I was totally cooked from trying to catch those two guys back to back. There was lots of trying to stay ahead of the turns, using the downhills well, hoping to stay far enough ahead and out of sight that he wasn’t interested in chasing me. Plus, it was entirely possible, if not probable, that he didn’t care a whit about where I was and wasn’t even thinking about our relative positions. It was sort of hard to take that for granted after running for 4 hours though….

We took a turn where we were heading down past the 25 mile marker and I looked back to see he had closed the gap to around 250-300 meters and was drawing closer. I ended up using the “power 100’s” trick (high turnover for 100 paces with the idea that once you hit 100, you can walk for a bit. Of course, they work best when you get to 100 and say, “One more, and then I can walk…” and see how many you can do in a row.) I could hear the finish line coming, took a turn and, dammit, another paseo. I powerwalked up as best I could, then hit the top and did as many “power 100’s” as I could to get to the other side of the road and down the last straightaway, not knowing where the guy was behind me.

I pulled in to the finish line in the slowest time I think I’ve ever had in a marathon, but actually relieved that something good had happened out of such misery. I went virtually straight to the medical tent and asked for an ice pack, and I think the doctor was quite happy when I said I would just put it on my groin myself under my compression shorts and no, he didn’t have to wrap and pack it for me.

In the end, I won my weight class, had a good conversation with a guy from Michigan who flew out for the Clydesdale National Championships as well, and even made it back to the hotel in time to get cleaned up.

Gianna asked me if this was the last marathon, and I’m actually not sure. I think I would like to do one more where it is actually *easy,* and I can just run and enjoy it, as opposed to this one, and the last one, the Vermont City Marathon, which ended up being one long uphill. We’ll see. In the end, if there’s another USACFRF National Championship Marathon, I’d think seriously about it. That being said, I’m thinking the Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon in Alaska in celebration of turning 40 next summer. 50th state visited, 40th year lives, 12th marathon run. Why not?

JDF

1st Annual New England Clydesdale
Beer Mile Championships: Race Results

Beer Mile Post Race Story
Jeff Durso-Finley

I Want to Wear The Red, White & Blue Of  USACFRF

Official USACFRF Clydesdale Model
Kevin Garlick - Glastonbury, Connecticut
Modeling A Coolmax Racing Tanks with the USACFRF logo

-amazingly this model once ran 2:47 at the Long Island Marathon-



It is easy to be part of all this...become a member for life
by purchasing a USACFRF Licensed piece of merchandise
and you're in!! Great way to support USACFRF and the
Clydesdale & Filly Movement


USACFRF Membership Roster

Ronald Cavage - Phoenix, Arizona


You could debate all day long who "The Man" is and maybe we will some day...Big Men spend less time talkin' about this crap since they would rather spend the time chasin' the ladies and drinking beer but it does go without question that Ron Cavage is in the top 5 nationally and if you got ole Papa Clyde a slice of pizza and a cold Smithwicks some day you might get him to say when no one is lookin and a tape recorder isn't in front of him that the self dubbed "Clydesdale King" on a good day could whup anyone and I mean anyone within the World of Clydism...he's won races outright with good competition like the Eastham 5 Miler back in the early mid 90's....he's won Big Man Run II when it wasn't the novelty that it has become and knowing him like I do, I'll have 30 other accomplishments in my "in-box" by the end of the day and they will get posted!!

"Savage Cavage" as some like to call him cause he can cut a man up with his literary pen like no other, has run the Pittsburgh Marathon in a time of 2:32 at a time when he may not have qualified for Clydesdale status but when he did he still brought that incredible speed with him as he moved up within the clydie divisions - Roberto Duran never brought the "Hands of Stone" with him when he moved up...the "Clydesdale King" did!!!

Ronald is in semi-retirement these days..the stock market, wild women, cold Tecates, 40ism and many miles have eased the winning desire's yet he still ventures East once a year to hang with the "Boys of Summer" at the annual right of passage for all up and coming Clydies...the "Big Man Run"
 


Ronald Cavage is our "Where Are They Now" Clydesdale of the Times!!