Trail Running Series Final

Yesterday was the 4th and final Backyard Burn race of the fall series. Having been postponed from last week when there was snow and ice, this race no longer counted towards series points...making me the series winner for 30-39 females! Even with the points from the 4th race I still would have won!

It was a very wet and cold day at Hemlock park. This is the hilliest course with almost no letup between hills. The downhills are usually very manageable, but with all the rain they were mudslides. I will post some pics that I'm sure the photographer took of all the mud. It was unbelievable. I could not get a good footing most of the time. I was either sliding backwards going up the hills, forwards (most scary) going down, or sideways on the flat parts. At one point I slid sideways almost into a ravine and grabbed hold of a thorn bush to save myself...ouch!

Trail running

Sunday was EX2 Adventures' Backyard Burn at Wakefield, the second in a series of 4 trail races that I compete in every Spring and Fall. I was looking forward to a fast time at Wakefield, as it's the flattest of the courses. When I ran it last year, it was dry and sunny (see pic on left) but it was the first time I'd done Wakefield and so I held back because I assumed there would be some hills...but there weren't. This time, knowing the course, I planned to run it as fast as I could.

Those plans were somewhat shelved when I woke up Sunday morning to steady rain that showed no signs of having let up from the night before. Because it's low and flat, Wakefield Park had turned into a mud slick, and the formerly dry stream beds were now filled with rushing, knee-deep water. Awesome! I like mud. Some places were a little precarious as they became very sloppy after several hundred people running over them, and because I was running 10 miles I had to do two loops, and you really didn't want to wipe out (lots of people did, of course, although I wasn't one of them) because there are lots of rocks. Whenever I put my foot in a stream I held my breath because there were some very deep parts where your leg would disappear, and some of the streams had rocks at the bottom.

But it was fun, really! And I was still able to post a time 4 mins faster than last year, and win my age group, which was especially nice because I've been 2nd in all previous seven Backyard Burn races!