I earned my Cookie!

I did the trail run on Sunday. It was an absolutely beautiful day. The race had 200 pre-registered participants and about another 80 show up that morning. There were some very familiar faces in the crowd. Tango winner - Chris Welch was there. He was the first runner across the line for the 11 mile course. He's amazing. Jeff Dahl and Kelly (Dahl) Mangione ran together. They crossed the finished line looking refreshed (if only....)Everyone said the 11 mile run was great. I suspect this race will occur again next year. If so I hope that some of you give it a try.

Anyway - here's my summary. I ran the 4 mile race (2 miles up hill climb on Morrison Run Road and Back down). Nothing compared to the 11 mile course! We all started at the same time on a narrow dirt road. The walkers were behind the runners. It was somewhat tough to find a place to run given the nature of the gravel road. There was quite a bit of zig/zag positioning for the first mile. Apparently, there's lease gas somewhere in the vicinity as well...the odor was quite strong initially.

For the first 3/4 mile I felt great..wow...my training was paying off. Then the nausea started. I am still not sure if it was due to my heart rate or lack of nutrition (my lungs felt fine). I slowed my pace and at one point started power walking. Nausea wouldn't go away. I was able to run in the ruts of the road thus avoiding the rocks on the road. The only really difficult portion was an obvious mud hole that they'd recently filled with large CHUNKS of rock. How do you runners do it??? I had to walk...no way my ankles would hold up on that surface.

I celebrated at the turnaround....yeah...two miles of uphill climb over....now it's down hill the rest of the way. I told Jerry to please go ahead. It was too hard to have him near me as we kept bumping into each other. So off he ran like an little kid (rrrrr). He joked with many of the people that he passed that he was the first of the 11 mile runners--just finishing up. He's lucky none of them tripped him!

Kathie (yeah "Vash's Kathie" from the Tango) told me that I looked strong coming through the finish line. She's always a great motivator. I didn't meet my goals given that I had to adopt more of a run/walk approach to this race. I did however finish. I will run it again next year and hope to see great improvements in my time.

I think my time was 42 minutes---not great but willing to put it out there so I can reference it next year and say....wow....look how I've improved.

Oh yeah there were dozens of celebratory cookies at the finish line --the best part for me--one of the guys I cyclewith ran the 4 mile course. As he came through the finished line He said quite loudly "Where are the cookies?!" Me--I didn't eat any cookies...just drank water...too nauseous (bummer).