The City Mouse and the Trails
I have often described myself as the City Mouse, while my brother 13 months my younger is the Country Mouse. When going on vacation, I enjoy hotels, restaurants and city life. He leans more towards camping and cheese whiz. Last weekend, I turned into the runners equivalent to the Country Mouse and attempted my first trail race.
OK. 4 weeks since the San Francisco Marathon, and I was ready to get going again. I ran an 11 mile long run last weekend, and thought I’d get 12 or so it this weekend before hitting my 12 week Pfitzinger training program leading up to the San Antonio marathon. Friday August 21st started out innocently enough. After working for a few hours, I emailed my friend to see if he was going to run long on Saturday morning. He replied that he was going to run the Xterra 18k trail race on Saturday morning. Trail race? I had heard about them from several runners, and most had positive things to say. The distance was in the ballpark of what I wanted to do, so I decided a few hours later I would give it a try. My biggest concern was that I didn’t want to aggrevate my ITB any more than I had already done, so I told myself I would just take it easy, not worry about my time, and walk if I needed.
The first indication that I was in trouble came when the organizer began to describe the course 5 minutes before the stop. We would run about 1/2 mile, then go up a cliff. (Did he say cliff?) Last year there were ropes on the cliff, but this year…no ropes. There would be a rope when we came down the hill near the end of our loop course. Now, I knew there were going to be some hills, and single track. I expected encounters with rocks, branches and roots. But a cliff? I was in trouble.
Once the race began, I started off very slowly. When we got to the cliff, it was crowded, so there was no need to rush. After about 45 seconds, we were at the top (with no injuries!), and began running the trail. I have to admit I enjoyed the bobbing and weaving through the trees, although I noticed immediately that trail running did not allow runners to get into a rhythm. There were no straightaways, and between the hills, roots, rocks and turns, there was no chance to get into any type of running rhythm.
The race started at 8am, which meant that the sun was already up for at least an hour, and it was getting hot (shocking!). I was relieved to see the water station after about 1 mile, but I ignored it and used it as an opportunity to pass a few of the slower runners. The next aid station was about a mile later. Sweating profusely, I chugged the surprisingly warm cup of water. Apparently, the race organizers determined ice was not needed during this trail run. No problem, I can handle it.
The runners participating in the 18k race were to run the loop course twice, while the 5k participants were to run a shortened loop once. However, someone forgot to tell the person setting up the course that 9k + 9k = 18k, because when I completed the first loop, my Garmin 305 showed I had run 4.15 miles. Now in the past, I have noticed a descrepancy between Garmin mileage and race mileage before. In fact, my Garmin said I ran 26.7 miles in San Francisco (extra credit baby!), but this difference was huge. 4.15 miles equals 6.7 kilometers. Either someone made a mistake, or I am going to be running this course 3 times, not twice. By the time I finished climbing the cliff for the second time, I was really hoping we were only running it twice. I was feeling some IT band pain, and chances are I would not want to go around a third time out of fear of injuring it further.
The second time around, I didn’t see too many people. I passed two people during the next 4 miles, the carefully stumbled, slipped and skidded down the cliff on shaky legs. At the bottom, I could see what I hoped was the finish line, and not the 2/3 line, about a half mile ahead. There really wasn’t anybody ahead of me to chase, so I just strided it out through the finish line. My finish time was 1:19:48 for about 8.4 miles. I was 5th in my age group and 28th overall out of 80 finishers. Not bad, not great. If I was really motivated to “race” this course instead of use it as a training run, I probably could have cut a little, not a lot, off the time.
All in all, it was a fun experience. The race confirmed that I don’t want to run any trail runs while seriously preparing for a marathon. There are just too many opportunities to get hurt. However, the race was a nice diversion from another training run in the neighborhood or road race. It is something I would encourage runners to try at least once, but it certainly is not for everybody. The City Mouse is still trying to figure out if he will ever run another!
