Two weeks off the broken foot and it's time for a race to get me back in it. My daisy duke wearing buddy from Indiana Tough Mudder 2011 gave me a shout and said he and a friend signed up for the Red Bull Trail Daze race. This was 5 days before the event, but how could I turn it down? Naturally I didn't back down from the challenge and signed up, then immediately contracted the plague, well a cold. Far too determined and excited to be back out I fueled myself with Sudafed and Red bull, a.k.a. Meth Lite.
It was a unique event, here's the scoop. The race is a choose your own adventure type of deal. There were three different courses to pick from, yet we were all part of the same race. The other 140 runners and myself all started together and ran the same trail for about 1/2 a mile. At this point we were presented with three choices: Hard and short, medium and mid distance, or easy and long. There was no way of knowing just how long any of the paths were, but we were warned the distance we were to run would be no shorter than 3 and no longer than 5.
I of course chose the hard and short. What fun would it be otherwise? The hard trail was largely single track with a lot of short ups and downs and a few scrambles through brush and over small creeks. Some hills had roots for steps and at other times we were climbing and descending wooden staircases. One of the hardest parts of a trail race on an unfamiliar route, is there is almost no way of knowing how much farther to the finish making pacing difficult. Being out of condition I was worried about getting the right pace.
I started out towards the front of the 141 runners for fear of the single track bottle necking on the hard course. This fortunately was never the case. I've become fairly adept at downhill running and used that to my advantage. Sprinting downhills is by far one of my favorite parts of trail running, just let gravity do all the work propelling your feet forward and down. It takes some courage to learn how to do this, but once you do it's so much fun. I made all my passes on down hills. Uphill is another story for me. I know to take small steps and keep it going steady, but I'm still far too out of breath at every peak. The clear answer is I simply need to do purposeful hill work so my legs and lungs learn how to handle it.
I finished with a pretty solid time of 26:33 for somewhere around a 5k trail distance. Even more exciting for me is that I finished 28th out of 141. Next challenge for me is the Planet Adventure Winter Trail Half Marathon. They are also hosting a 1/4 and full marathon at the same time. It will be my longest run ever and really exciting as it's a night race!
Sweet, race swag. Also drank a few Red Bulls pre-race.
