Slicker N’ Hog Snot Trail Race

RACE REPORT

I have a lot of thoughts about today’s race, but first let me just tell you about the race itself. Last night when I went to bed the weather forcast was calling for rain from 3am through the scheduled start time. I figured I was in for another muddy trail run. This would have been fine with me, but for my family back at the finish line, rainy races aren’t much fun. Well, the weather man was dead wrong. It was 64 and sunny for most of the race.

The race course was awesome!! There was very little running on actual road. From the start we left the parking lot and descended downhill and crossed the river near where it balloons out into a small lake. Around the 1/2 mile marker there was a short but steep uphill section. Once you crested it, it was downhill to the dam. We crossed the dam, started running upstream, and cut through a small meadow. Then we went onto my favorite part of the course. It was a wooded trail, that followed the river rapids below. We were on this for a while before doglegging to the right into the most technical part of the course. It was a deer trail with roots, and rocks, and downed trees, and MANY MANY low hanging branches. I enjoyed this part, but by looking at my splits, it added abut 2 minutes to my mile pace. We eventually looped back and ran downstream and then uphill to the parking lot where it all began.

Now I know it’s technically impossible for a loop course to be ALL uphill, but this race kind of had that feel to it. I felt like I was running uphill for 85% of the race and steeply downhill for the remaining 15%. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this beautiful course. This was probably my first REAL trail race. Last week’s May Day for Matt and last year’s Edaville 5-miler were more like running on dirt roads than actual trails. That being said, I’m hooked. If I could do all trail runs, I would give up road races.

Now some thoughts about my performance. Despite the fact that I have been running again for a little over one month, I am still extrememly paranoid about refracturing my tibias. I’m eating better than ever, taking every imaginable supplement, and babying my legs between runs. I won’t allow myself to run two days in a row, and today’s race was the first time since January 1st that I have run 5 miles. Most all of my training runs have limited to 2.9 miles with a 4.1 mile or two mixed in. I told myself at the beginning of the race, that I was not going to treat this like a race, but like a training run. And in that I was successful. My min/mi was 8:42 (almost exactly the average for my last few training runs). That being said, at the end of the race I was disappointed. I think part of me was still on a high from making the podium last weekend, and even though I knew I wasn’t going to be there again today, I was disappointed by my standing (23rd out of 68).

So the way I see it, I have two problems. The first one is, how will I know when I can start to push it again? When will I stop being paranoid about re-injury? The second problem is that I have to come to terms with not performing well in every race. If my plan throught the summer is to treat my 5Ks and 1/2 marathons like training runs for my October marathon, I have got to get used to not finishing as high up in the standings as I would like.

Anyway, it was a beautiful and fun day with a great run and time with my family. Today also marked the 200th mile that I’ve logged since I started keeping this training blog. After the race I took the fam out for lunch. Here are some pictures from the race.