I ran it with Kate and thank goodness I had someone else there with me or it wouldn't have been very pretty.
It had rained that morning so it made the course even more challenging so every hill on the trail was slick and hard to get up.
It started by going up a big, grassy hill by the archery range and then along a road inside of the park and it was free and easy. But then the challenges began as we entered the trails. The first down slope was muddy and hard to keep your balance. Then you had to go right back up again. It seemed to do that every 30 seconds for the next two miles. Each down slope was hard to keep your footing. Each up slope was hard to get footing at all. You would either have to pull yourself up with a root or a tree or just grab into the mud hoping to get some hard surface. Like I said, by the two mile area, and the first water station I was spent! From there the altitude changed into more continuous hills instead of up and down, which was great from the quick challenge perspective but hard from the keep going up the hill perspective. We never really realized it but we hit the turnaround point but everything just seemed different. When we finally made it back to the water station it was uplifting to know that we had just two miles back. Everything was less muddy and that helped a lot as there was less stress on just trying to stay up (I fell just once).
We were able to run for awhile on the way back but that was challenging as well as you would meet up with people on the trails (packs of five) that wouldn't move and too hard to get around them. But once we got out of the woods we were able to run to the finish line.
A great, challenging, amazing day and run!
Distance: 12K (8 miles)
Time: 1:55:23
Pace: 15:29
Overall place: 166 of 195
Place in gender: 116 of 122
Division M40-49 place: 29 of 33
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