The slant-y, hill-y 13.1

Today, I ran the most challenging 13.1 miles ever. I’m claiming false advertising. The race was local and the pamphlet claimed that the course was beautiful (true), challenging (true), and a nice mix of trail, paved and gravel roads (false). It was 99% trail and nothing nice about it. Will I do it again? Oh yeah.

A couple miles into it, my running friend Jen said “It’s so slant-y!!” The current trail we were on reminded me of one of those gravity hills like the Cosmos Mystery Area Kedron and I once visited in South Dakota. So a few miles in we came up with all the -y words we could think of to describe this insane course:

• slant-y
• hilly
• wind-y (as in the road winds around, not the wind blows, we would have liked some wind today!)
• stinky (we kept smelling dead animals, and after awhile I started to wonder if it was me!!)
• shady
• muddy
• rocky

The course was so beautiful, and crazy, that I had to take some photos and videos because I knew no one would believe me when I tried to describe it. In fact, this is the first race I’ve ever had to worry about rope burn.

Sorry, the video’s a bit bumpy because I was trying not to roll down the hill!

And then there was the mountain climbing (very short clip)

And the streams we had to cross!

And the fallen trees we had to crawl under/jump over. The one below we had to crawl under. No wonder I was covered in dirt! One log that we had to climb over, was covered in sweat and it was GROSS!

Look at Jen, this is like 10 miles in and she still looks so fresh and beautiful. Me, I was a sweaty disaster!

These race organizers always have funny signs made up.

It was quite an adventure! I’m sure I’ll be feeling it tomorrow in my legs.