Tale of the Older Dude and the Ironman

My 25k trail race on saturday morning went ok, although I'm sure I could have pushed harder. The course was in really good shape and the weather was great, but the number of finishers was down about 25%. Hmmmm, maybe it was the economy? Weird. It is an expensive race I suppose ($33 pre-register, $45 same-day).

My splits were all over the place but that is to be expected in a trail race where the terrain is varied per mile. I still love the fact that we (twice) ran down a ski-jump hill that is so steep, it requires a zig-zag technique to get down safely.

My legs definitely began to fail me before my fitness level did. I faded over the last 3 miles. I spent most of the race following closely behind an older guy wearing a hat, and a girl in a tank top that was wearing a fuel belt with water bottles. I caught up to them after the first loop (2 loops = 25k), then I stopped to take a gu and water. Then I trailed closely behind them for most of the second loop. I thought certainly I would crush them on the second loop, there was no way I was going to lose to an old guy in a hat or a tank-top wearing girl (no offense, but this was the mantra that I used to push me through the rough spots).

No such luck though, I couldn't keep up with them down the stretch. The tank girl beat me by about one minute. I looked her name up on athlinks.com and she is an Ironman, so I was within 1 minute of an Ironman! heh. I finished in about 2:16, which put me in the top 36% of finishers.

Fun times! It's a fun course, I hope to go back a couple times throughout the summer to mix it up.

Here is the course profile according to my garmin:














Here are my splits:















The crazy course (blue):









The girl I could not keep up with on the final stretch (shhh don't tell her I'm posting this):
























Older dude with hat that beat me:

























Next year these guys are TOAST!