Trail Run

I did it! I marked off another item off my 30 before 30 list. This one was HARD! Like I was totally undertrained. I had the endurance to run 10 miles, but not the endurance to run 10 miles with some serious elevation gain and terrain change. My body still hurts. Real bad.

But, with that being said - I am freakin' proud of myself. While I felt like I was undertrained, I definitely trained for this race! I truly don't know how people with young kids even train for any type of race over a 10k. Like really? Tell me your secrets? How do you find the time? I gotta know. I get a serious case of mom guilt every time I go out for a long run. For my last long run before the race I hired a babysitter. Seriously - probably one of the best things I've done for myself in a long time. And I'm keeping it up - another post on that later!

Ok I've had lots of training questions. You're going to hate me, but I didn't use a training schedule - I just kind of went with it and did what I had time for. I made sure that I increased mileage every week to two weeks (sometimes I just couldn't swing a long run, so I didn't sweat it.) Occasionally on a Saturday I would ask Matt to stay with the kids so I could go on a long run alone or with my friends... I think I did this twice.) And then I hired a sitter for my 8 mile before the race - as mentioned above.

Any time that I did circuits in my garage I added a running section and ran uphill on my treadmill 10.0! So hard. The inclines are where I was undertrained. I needed to work on those so much more to be prepared for this race, but I survived. I tried to workout 2-4 times a week every week leading up to the race and that helped a lot. Plus, I think the fact that I run slow helps with my endurance. HA!

The race actually came out to 11 miles in Map My Run. The first 2 miles were brutal. Lost of boulders to climb over and lots of uneven, uphill ground. Then I felt pretty ok until mile 5. That bad boy was straight uphill - all we could do was walk it. There were some swear words. There were a few people who had reached the top and were panting as they ran down the hill, saying "great job" or "keep it up" or "there's chocolate at the top!"

Once we reached the top/end of mile 5 we refueled with some chocolate, water melon, water & electrolyte water and made our way down hill. We were careful to not book it down hill, mostly because it would have been too fast and too hard on our knees. And the ground was uneven, so keeping balance was more important than speed.

My friend Becky ran it with me and we both decided to only walk when we needed to. Like if it was too rugged or too uphill. At the end we felt like we walked way more than we thought we would, but when we did walk - we truly needed to. It was a rough race. I tried to keep Matt and some friends in the loop with a quick text every few miles. The last 2.5 miles were downhill and on single tracks (mountain biking paths) and they were the funnest. We kept pace with a few other runners and it just felt good. As my Map My Run was chiming in at 10 miles I felt like it had to be way off because there was NO WAY we were close to the finish line. I was starting to feel pretty discouraged. Then we could hear the announcers at the finish line and lots of cheering. I turned out of the trees and saw Matt, Kess and Manning and a few of my friends! I wasn't sure if anyone would make it so it was SO fun to see everyone!

My friend Becky and I finished in 2 hours and 54 minutes. We stopped for about 5 minutes at the top to stretch, eat and drink. I feel really happy with that time! I would love to train more and beat that time in the future, but that's only for the sake of progress.

You better believe that I took a WM Nutrition PreWorkout before the race started. I tried my hardest to not start out too fast (which was truly impossible because it was uphill) & made sure that I stayed hydrated. At the end I ran out of water and was kind of freaking out a little Thankfully Becky had some backup!

The McCall Classic Trail Run was my favorite race that I've ever ran. The owners were super nice, everyone that ran was super nice, and I got to chat with a friend the whole way! Becky, thanks for asking me random questions and singing me songs to keep me out of my head.

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