Dirty Bird Trail Race Report

So, I lived!  Obviously.

My three questions going into the race were, would I get the breakfast portion of the program right, would I dress more or less correctly for the conditions, and was I as prepared as I needed to be to get the job done?  The short answers are, yes, nailed it; yes, with a notable exception; and yes, but with a lot of great lessons learned.

It was a gorgeous day for a race.  It was clear and around freezing when I left, small bowl of cereal on board hopefully to stay.  (Which it did, without troubling me, to my immense relief.)  I dressed as I would for a normal road run at that temperature - tights, 1st layer, jacket, gloves, and hat - and brought a few lighter/heavier options along, plus a post-race change of clothes.  The drive out was lovely - the race was in truly beautiful hill country - and faster than I expected, so I was there over an hour before the race began.  Had a great chat with a gal from California; she was an experienced trail racer out there but this was her first east coast run.  She was planning to run with her dog, a border collie; I never saw her out on the trail but I believe they made people with critters start after everyone else.

I wound up running in exactly what I'd set out in.  Took off the hat and gloves at some point on the trail and was a bit warmer than I'd have liked (race time temp was about 40F), but overall, close enough.  I find standing around in the cold prior to the start the worst part of cold weather racing, and in this case, there was none of the usual clothing shed/pickup stuff you find at larger races, so it was a little bit of pick your poison.  (If you've never run a big race in cold weather - it's common for runners to wear an extra layer to the start area, and discard it as the race begins.  The discards are collected, washed, and given to a charitable cause.)  The only problem, turns out, was my shoes.  But I'll get to that.

I don't know how many people ran the race; my guess would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 400.  Considering much of the race was on single track trail, it's probably a good thing there weren't tons of people out there.  We started on a road, though, and I have to say I was worried at first that that's where we'd be spending out time.  Not that the hills wouldn't have been challenging, but that wasn't what I was after. 

Silly me.  In less than 1/4 mile, we turned off the road onto a leafy, rocky trail, a good preview of things to come.  We went up a very long, steep hill, EASILY as steep as any of the hills I'd been running at home and far longer.  My cardio was fine, though, and I was very, very happy that I'd done all of those seemingly masochistic hill runs during training and even more happy that I do some stair climbing every school day.  I honestly never thought of that as training - more just my stubbornly refusing to take an elevator up a mere five stories - but a good half or more of the ascents were far more like running stairs than running hills (which I very duly noted for future training reference), so I was glad that work was in the bank.  Of course, what goes up must come down, and plunging down steep, rocky, leaf-covered trails was just something I hadn't been prepared for, mentally.  So I went down with the brakes full on at first, which is actually a great core exercise.  However,  as I was burning down my brake pads, gazelle-like experienced trial runners were FLYING down past me, and I finally remembered that brakes-on is not the way to go down hills, something I learned eons ago when hiking.  (Relax, let gravity work for you, watch your footing, and try not to overspeed your abilities.) 

One of the lures of running trails for me is the idea of being in the woods, in the hills, in some kind of incredible natural setting.  However, when you're running a trail race in said woods and there are rocks and slippy spots about, you can pay a price for looking up and enjoying said natural setting, and I did.  I was very careful on my ascents/descents and any other territory I felt was potentially tricky, but when I thought I could relax a bit and did?  I bit the dirt.  Actually, I bit the dirt four times.  (Another fact, duly noted: keep your eyes/concentration on the trail!)  I scraped an elbow on one fall, something I didn't even notice until I showered later, but otherwise was unscathed.  The only real damage on the day was to a big toe, and that was from a callus that kind of got detached, to put it gently, due to a blister that formed under it.

Which brings me to the shoe thing.  I ran in an older pair of my regular road shoes, figuring even if they weren't the best thing, they'd get me through the day and I could take things from there.  And they probably would have been perfectly fine - if I'd had them tied tightly enough.  And I don't mean around the top, I mean around the toe box, where I generally LIKE to have a ton of room to move and groove.  However on the trail, my feet slid around in the shoes to the point where they cost me traction and were definitely a factor in some unsteady moments, if not one or two of the falls.  And of all body parts, my feet came out of the thing feeling most beat up, so I definitely thing some well-fitting trail shoes are in my future, considering my race plans for next year.

So overall the race went very well.  I expected to finish in maybe 2 hours, and finished in 1:49.  Although I did walk up the last hill, I had a lot of gas left at the end and ran the last mile and a half or so, which was over less hilly ground, at what felt like a normal road clip.  So overall, I had a great experience, and gained a lot of useful knowledge about how to better prepare for similar races in the future.  In fact, I already have the next one planned out - this same organization runs a 15K spring trail race (nicknamed a mud fest) which is on my calendar.

My race T shirt, commemorative glass, and bloody sock.  Forrest and Jack had to get in on the photo op, of course.