Well we finished. It was cold, mid 30's, but clear no rain or snow. Grand Ridge is beautiful, really nice trails and once again well organized and great food after.
Thoughts:
-mid 30's may be too cold for me. It felt like razor blades slicing my lungs apart with every breath and it gave me a splitting headache the entire race.
-I'm very apposed to starting on an uphill...I need at least a mile to mile and a half to warm up my legs before the crazy hills start!
-Setting time goals for single track trail running is kind of pointless. You're only as fast as the slowest person in front of you, until you find a spot you can pass.
-Running, walking, running, walking kills my legs. By 3.5 miles I had nothing and I mean nothing left in my legs. Thank goodness the downhill part came at 4 ish miles in, I let gravity keep my legs moving!
-I'm supper confident on the downhill, feel good about my footing and have no trouble keeping track of what my next step should be and what the next 4 to 5 steps involve. ie. rocks, water, roots, mud patches and trees to jump over - all of which we encountered today.
-Despite the challenges...I LOVE trail running! So pretty through the woods and I don't get bored while trail running.
Unfortunately both my water crossings were less than ideal, I had wet feet for most of the race, and 5 miles is more than enough to have blisters on the bottom of my feet. There were a lot of lose rocks on the trail as well. In the first 1/2 mile I twisted my ankle a couple of times, nothing serious, but enough to cause twinges up into my bad knee. Not using it as an excuse for anything since most of the time there is some sort of ache or pain while running, but I felt it.
I read an article recently about not heel striking on the downhill, it acts like a break, so I focused on hitting mid-foot on the downhill and there were some parts I literally felt like I was flying down the trail, and it was FUN!!!
As for the time goal...my GPS tracked it at 5.6 miles in 1:14 ish (official time will be posted tomorrow). The time I wanted to beat - 1:09:18.6 although that race was 4.76 miles and this race was almost a mile more, plus I started my GPS 4 minutes before the race started. It takes me a little bit to get my phone zipped into the arm band and get the earphones in my ears, so I never wait for the gun to do that.
All in all it was fun. I may reconsider running races Nov - Jan though. I'm sort of regretting having registered for a race next month already. Will have to look into getting one of those hats that have the muffler thing that goes over your mouth, so I'm not breathing frigid cold air the whole time.
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