Gorges Half Marathon 2025

We’ve run all but one of the Gorges Ithaca Half Marathons. Headed up by Ian Golden of Red Newt Racing, this race has had many different courses. It has a great finish party and a wonderful vibe. It is a perfect race to wrap up our 5 half marathon challenge for 2025.

Why does it pay to be local though? Well in our case for this particular version of the course we live less than a mile from the start line. This means no porta potty lines, and easy trip to get there. We drove there and parked at my school building where I teach and sauntered over to the start from the school. I was there long enough to listen to a few pre-race announcements before we were off!

The first few miles of this course have a couple of hills. Last year I walked them. This year I decided the best choice for my day was to make myself run them. I kept my sister’s voice in my head, “equal effort” which is to say that it is ok to slow down, even way down, but keep up the effort that you were using to run on the flat ground. Running the hills felt manageable today. It was a lot cooler than it was last year, and I knew 8 of the last 9 miles were downhill.

Somewhere shortly after mile 4, I started to leapfrog with a kid. He kept going a few steps ahead of me and then I’d go a few steps ahead of him. This went on for what felt like a very long time. I finally looked over ready to say, “have a great race!” thinking he was going to finally pass me for good only to say, “Ananda?” He laughed and said, “Ms. Dawson, I wondered how long it would take you to realize it was me.”

I teach 7th grade math and Ananda has been my student for part of the year. He had since left to be homeschooled, and had even reached out to ask me about running after he left. It turns out that he has been getting very into running! We started to run next to each other and the miles zipped by with easy chatting. It was his first half marathon.

We neared mile 9 and I started to think he may want to go ahead and feel like it was awkward to zip past me. I said, “if you go ahead, let’s get a picture at the end. This was fun.” He laughed and said, “no Ms. Dawson this is a good pace for me.” I said, “ok let’s do this!” I think we both decided we were going to finish this together.

I admit that I rarely pay close attention to pre-race information. In my early days of running I made playlists in advance, studied the terrain, and knew exactly where the porta potties were as well as what they were serving for electrolytes. Now, I’ve slacked (and I need to get back to this prior version of me), so when Ananda asked me if there was a water stop coming soon, I honestly didn’t know. I remembered from last year that they were pretty far from each other so I told him I thought there wasn’t another until we got off the trail around mile 12. He needed water and gratefully at that moment I saw a stop in the distance. “There it is!” He quickly ran ahead to get there fast. I arrived and he grabbed me a strawberry as I got a cup of water and off we went.

The middle 8 miles of this course is on a trail that I run all the time. In fact, this year it is one of the courses on the Finger Lakes Runners Club Challenge; a collection of 10 courses that you run on your own. One of the things you can do in the FLRC Challenge is win a course sign if you run a course the most times. This year, I’m trying to win this one, so I’d logged a fair number of miles on this terrain already.

As such, I know how hard the last bit of the trail feels and I know I don’t love having to continue running when the trail ends. This is mostly because I have a strongly engrained mental association with finishing the trail equating to being done.

When we hit mile 12, Ananda was excited. He was one mile away from finishing his first ever half marathon. I was one mile away from finishing my 5th one for the year, but in that final mile I just wanted to be done. I glanced at my watch though and realized we were on track for a sub two hour time. I owed it to myself and to Ananda to keep pushing hard.

“You’re almost there” they yelled as we passed the final water stop. We were most definitely not almost there. But, soon enough we were and I came in hearing Ian announce, “and the last Dawson is crossing. The Dawsons are all in except the youngest and fastest Dawson who is in Boston.” I smiled. I took a picture with Ananda and talked with his family. A water bottle in hand, I went to find Scott and Elizabeth.

View my Strava flyover.

One of my favorite parts of this race is seeing so many people we know and enjoying the post-race vibe. Fittnell Barbecue is there with a great post-race meal, and the atmosphere is celebratory. I found Scott and Elizabeth and went to get my food. I saw parents of students, as well as kids from my class that had come to watch their parents finish the race.

We waited for the bus to take us back to Trumansburg. We were not entirely sure where it picked up, so when we saw it arrive I surprised myself and ran there to make sure we got a spot! Once on the bus we jabbered away with several folks we knew. The bus was filled with that post race positive energy. This energy is such a large reason I run - the sport is filled with people challenging themselves, pushing their limits, and giving in to positive peer pressure to work hard. I love it and races like this are great reminders of all of this!

Pretty fun to see the 3 of us listed here in the results in my search for Dawson on the results page. Scott and Elizabeth both had exceptional race days. And my sub two was something I wasn’t so sure I could do so I felt pretty darn proud of myself! Earlier in this half marathon challenge, my friend Matt surprised himself with a sub two in the Skunk Cabbage Classic. He thought those days were behind him and he did it. I felt that same exhilaration that Matt felt when he ran the Skunk. It was cool that it happened on my last race. View official results.

13.1 mi in 1:57:28 // 274 of 757 overall, 7 of 53 age group, 8:58 pace // strava