And this was a TRAIL in every sense of the word, meaning it wasn't just some flat grassy path, it was a narrow, root-and-rock-laden trail with fallen logs and huge muddy-swampy areas. There were some wooden stairs and a couple bridges that had to be crossed, and doing that all in the dark of night with a faint orange glow that only serves to let you know that there is not a gigantic tree or rock wall on your very next step rather than to actually light your way was....well, an experience.
Truthfully? I loved it.
Once it was over.
During, I mostly just hoped I didn't fall down, and tried to stay reasonably close to packs of people with real head lamps.
Results:
87th of 230 racers
13th of 54 in my age group (F 30-39)
Time of 1:14:21.7
In my training, I ran 6 miles a couple of times, each in about 58 minutes. I ran a 7-miler once, in the bitter cold, and clocked my 6.55 time as 1:04:40, running along the Riverwalk bike path near my house. I was kind of hoping to beat that time, but once I started on the trail I realized what a joke that was, seeing as how I was leaping over logs every 500 foot, and the last mile of this race was so awfully muddy that I slowed to a trot just to keep my shoes from getting sucked off my feet.
My good bud Heather was sucker enough to run this race with me, here we are before realizing what we'd gotten ourselves into. I know, my head lamp is certainly stylish, but that's where its valuable qualities end. Unless maybe someone was trying to use it to pass off as a dying firefly or something.
After the race, we headed back to Heather's house for shower and pizza, and to meet up with some friends to check out the Super Bowl Village in downtown Indy. I felt surprisingly refreshed considering my day, and managed to stay out on the town until about 1:30 a.m.
The gals: Me, Michele, Heather, Ashley
We finished off the festivities with a steak burrito from La Bamba's, which everyone knows is the mark of a truly fantastic night.
No comments:
Post a Comment