Wow, dig this great picture that Jonnene took of me with about 150 meters to go to the finish this morning! Hit that puddle hard, dude!! Then I ran up to her, stopped, gave her a kiss, and headed for the finish line.The Mojo Trail Run #2 is long history now and I'm home tending to my sore legs. The Wife is out shopping. I'm sitting at the computer and watching the weather to decide when to do a bike ride on Sunday with the college kids. After having Chinese takeout last night and getting the gear together, we woke up this morning not feeling like we'd had the full eight hours of sleep that we thought we had. Aren't you're supposed to feel refreshed when you've cranked out 480 straight minutes of snooze time? We got up, walked the dogs in misty air that was predicted to be gone by the weather guys last night. And it was around 38-40 degrees with, thankfully, no wind. Tolerable.
After getting our hind quarters into the Rav, we drove down to the Eddie Jones park for the exactly 5.91-mile trail run I had signed up for over a month ago. It was cold and wet at the park, drearily cloudy, and a small group of 39 runners had shown up for the fun and frivolity (about 25 other pre-registrants most likely decided to eat their entry fee and stay home in bed...the SMART ones). After hitting the loo one final time...cold weather makes me pee...a lot....it's not old age, I've always been like that.....I lined up with everyone else and got the pre-race talk: there'll be no aid stations on the course, you can carry some water if you want to, there's red tape marking the correct trail, be careful 'cause mud is slippery, etc. The gun goes off, I can see Jonnene taking pictures off to the left, and I can already feel water from the grass seeping into my trail shoes. Wow, that's cold....
I think I'm the 8th person to enter the trail head at the tree line and we head downhill on a winding trail. I'm behind a girl who looks like she's running pretty strong. I haven't been on a trail since last spring and I took most of the first half-mile getting my trail legs back again. You gotta raise your feet a bit to avoid roots, rocks, holes, and other obstacles. But it's going good and I'm staying on the girl's heels. Everyone ahead of us is pretty much gone...they're fast guys...the winner would end up being about 10 minutes faster than me. Toward the end of the first mile my legs started feeling heavy and I'm thinking "oh great, this might be an ugly run for the next five miles". Two guys passed me and that didn't sit well. But then my legs start feeling good and I got back up to my previous pace. At the end of two miles, I passed the girl and she fades back into the distance. I have one guy close behind me and there's nobody else anywhere close to us in the back. Then he passes me on a logging road which is okay because I'm happy with the pace I'm setting. On these logging roads I'm able to get up to street speed since they're mostly flatter and smoother...sorta.
The two of us catch one of the guys who passed me earlier and we dropped him like a bad habit. He fades into the distance, but the other guy with me is too strong and I have to let him go. I would pretty much keep him in sight the rest of the race but wouldn't be able to catch him. At around three miles in I had made the turn on a long switchback and tried to see who was behind me. NOBODY...and I was looking as far into the woods as I could. I decided to pick it up a notch, trying to put some extra distance between me and those in back, in case I cratered toward the end. That'd give me some extra time to crawl to the finish! But it all went well. I had to straddle, jump, and avoid a lot of muddy areas, puddles....you could see the shoe marks of the runners ahead of me where they slid, sank into mud, or avoided obstacles like I was doing. After going thru an open field and back into a last wooded section, I could hear other runners behind me (but far away) yelling to each other to keep going, don't give up...that kind of thing. I just kept chugging away, surprised at good I was feeling since I haven't been running enough over the last few months to feel this good. Maybe that ibuprofen does work! And the morning oatmeal wasn't bad either.
After kissing Jonnene, which probably cost me 15 seconds, I came across the finish line in 50:36 for a 8:35/mile average...the fastest I've ever averaged on a trail run longer than three miles. That got me third in my 50-59 age group and I think, maybe, seventh overall but I haven't seen all the results yet. I changed out of my wet, muddy gear and put some dry clothes on which made me a happy fella. Got home, took a shower (which made me even happier) and now I'm relaxing.
Hope you're having a good day.
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