Two days after my last post, I ended up hoping into a local trail race series. Or I should say one more trail race for me. Can't beat the cost...0. And some good runners come out to tackle a mysterious trail course that nobody knows until they show up. This year the Wissahickon Fall Series partnered with New Balance and Bryn Mawr Running Company to step it up a notch. Anyways, Thursday's race was a mere 2.75 miles but some really technical trail footing. Actually, a heck of a lot more than I expected. I was rocking my Inov-8 F-lites thinking we'd be on some more wide open double track that you could really open it up on. Once the race started, I did my best to work myself outfront and I managed to get on the trail first. However, right when we went into a big technical rocky downhill, I was swooshed. My reaction was...WHOA! And the person kept opening a nice gap on top of the distance he gained on the downhill. But I kept at it steadily eating back at his lead. Once we got off root riddled and boulder hopping stretch, I really started chopping it down, especially when we kicked it up climbing. With about 2/3rd of a mile to go, I caught up to the leader before he had one last surge to try to add some distance between us. But with a half mile to go, I finally caught up to him again and passed for good putting some serious distance before the finish. So I managed to come from behind for the win. Really happy with my performance.
And just two days later, (or yesterday), I traveled down to Maryland for my first ever race in that state. I ventured down to Havre de Grace for the Celebration Run, which is a 5K held in town for the past 15 years. (This year was 16) I was enticed by running a new course and the $100 gift card for 1st thru 3rd. Plus, I was in the town once before last year on my way back from Baltimore. It has some waterfront views. Considering I was back on the roads, I didn't have to worry too much about technical footing. However, not long after the race started, I had to worry about one thing....directions. Despite being such an established race, the course was open to traffic and had no course marshals. Luckily, I knew two things, the course did have arrows in orange and once I got by the 1 mile mark, I only had two more turns. At the registration, they had plenty of copies of the course available to look at. I also got the run down on the course from a runner who I have seen at a lot of my Delaware races. All of these things were a big help because within the first 1/3 of a mile, I was out all alone. About 1/2 mile in I got confused about a possible turn but I saw the orange arrow and went the right way. From there, nose to the grindstone and hammered out a 15:57. Second ended up being over three minutes back. It would have been a lot closer but apparently the people running 2nd and 3rd at the two mile mark, blew by the next to last turn. For my victory I got $100 to Dicks Sporting Goods which will come in handy at some point. And I celebrated the Celebration Run with breakfast at the Waffle House in town. Oh yeah.
Not sure of next weekend's racing. I may or may not race since as of today I am two weeks out from Steamtown. I'm feeling really good about my condition and don't want to screw it up.
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