NOTE: In the editing process of this post, much of it was lost. I'm too lazy to type it up again, so ya'll will get the abbreviated version with a couple of pictures. My apologies...
My alarm went off at precisely 6:00am Saturday morning (8 days ago). I felt like I was already somewhat awake, anticipating what was to come. After showering, getting my clothes together and checking the abysmal weather forecast, I got K up and we headed out the door.
It was race day... I signed up for the race a few months ago and have been running a few times a week with my running group to train for it. Twenty-five kilometres of hills and trails lay before me, and although I was a bit nervous, I just wanted the rain to hold off and I simply wanted to finish.
K didn't stick around at the start... she wanted to get back to bed so she could come back and watch me finish. Luckily, a friend happened to show up and sign up for the race unexpectedly, so I hung with her for a little bit beforehand. We watched people slowly gather around the start lines and go through the regular pre-race motions of warming up and stretching and making sure shoes were tied and water bottles were filled.
After seeing some friends and acquaintances and making an attempt to mentally prepare myself, we toed the line and took off. Throughout the race, we battled mud and creek (the area has had huge amounts of rain lately, and the mountain runoff has been travelling down our formerly wonderful trails) and fatigue and hills... but I made it out alive. I was aiming to complete the course in around 2hrs 50mins, and my final time was 2:33:34... I blasted my hopes by nearly 17 minutes! I was pretty excited not only because I'd never run that far before, but I placed 12th overall out of nearly 50 people in my first ever trail race and I was in front of people who ran these races regularly throughout the year.
Good on ya, legs... you did good. (The time clock on the right is at 3:33:35... the 50k runners left at 7am and the 25k runners left at 8am... the time looks longer because of the earlier start time, just so you don't think I'm lying!).
2 comments:
Congratulations! This is truly an amazing feat. Well done.
Thanks! I was pretty excited. I'll probably do a few more races in coming months, and I'm planning to do at least the 1/2 marathon in the fall here. I might even think about training for a full marathon, but we'll have to wait and see... that's an extra 17 kilometers of road running I'd have to tack onto my training.
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