Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Survived my *first* trail race




JamGirlz/Guyz have probably already read this and should feel free to move on to something more fun, like speculating on Phish's comeback tour (I'm still hoping for a huge 12/12/12 show to celebrate my big day--but that is all tangential).

On Saturday I ran my first official trail race, the VHTRC Women's Half Marathon. I've run many road halfs, a full, several 10ers and various other shorter length races, but this was my first foray into something a little (oh, hell, VERY) different.

The day was beautiful, if a little warm and humid, and the crowd had great energy. KJ and I even ran into a woman from the shelter who helped us adopt our second bully, Hippo (she even checked in on my at the last aid station to make sure I was still okay). My fears going into this race were totally unfounded--somehow I always forget that IN a race I find a way to keep moving, to keep running, to shut off the head stuff. Trail races are by nature slower than road races, but overall I did fine. I just enjoyed the scenery (at one point in a loop in the course there is a broken down Nash Rambler and another old car--a Ford Fairlane, maybe), the women were incredible and supportive and I just had a really stellar experience. One of my old housemates came in 3rd place, but she's always been a crazy fast ultrarunner.

I fell once in the first 5.1 miles and again in the last 3 or so so now I have this huge goose egg under my left knee, but I didn't bleed or completely scrape off the top layer of skin (as I have in road falls) and was able to get up from both falls, brush off the dirt and keep running. In fact, I think falling just made me run faster.

So now that I've had my first trail race experience I know a bit more what to expect in the 50K next month (boy, I need to get my mileage up!).




Yay! and its done...now on to the rest of my training. ;)




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