A few months ago a running race caught my eye. Running never usually catches my eye. But this run was on the Beulah trail at Greensfelder, which is where I ride my mountain bike quite a bit. What fun! A caveat was that it was at night. And a timed event, sort of like endurance mountain bike events. You could run for 9 hours (what the hell??), 6 hours (you kidding me?), or 3 hours, everyone ending at midnight. Ok, still sounded like fun.
I talked a few of my coworkers into doing the race. Sometime in December I started running a bit so that I could do this thing. I didn't really run enough but I did some strong runs and really thought I was solid. I got a sinus infection two weeks ago and that made me fear the worst. I did the race anyway. I hadn't run much over 10 miles until last night, but it wasn't the distance. I just suffered from the word go. I muddled through and finished 3 laps, right at 13.1 miles.
Strava was very impressed.
I did finish in the top ten. Top five would have been nice. But it really, really was all I had. No more. No mas. Finished. Done. It was right around 20 degrees at race time. My water froze. I kicked a rock in the most technical section and yardsaled, full spread eagle, at about the 2/3 point. And the third lap saw quite a bit of freezing drizzle and snow, which made the last rocky section really treacherous.
I was the first old guy to finish, though. And there was some 63 year old dude only a couple of places behind me!
Overall I would say that it was a great experience.
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