159: My first 25k

Timmy and Alex chose the Shotgun Blast Trail Run for their Christmas race. There was a 50k option, a 25k, or a 10k - they chose the 25k ... that's 15.5 miles. On trails.  I've done a full marathon, but this is on trails. It sounded scary to me. But up until this weekend I really had pictured us just going out for a really long jog. But then they got here and Alex said that Timmy was planning to bomb it and see how fast he could do it. So there went the "easy run" mentality that had given me an ounce of comfort. It was scary again. I was so nervous this morning. But it was so much fun ... I say that when I think of PART of the race, not the entire thing, though.

The race was 3 loops of a 5.2-mile course, which is one of my mini hells - I hate multiple loop courses, but even worse for me are out-and-backs so this wasn't ALL that terrible. The hardest part of those loops, though, was that the first two miles were straight. up. hill. Two miles. Uphill. And uphill on single-track trail. The first loop was hard, but not horrible. The second time was painful. The third time was down-right destroying to my legs. I was barely moving. It was faster for me to actually stop running and walk in parts.

The next mile of the loop was downhill. It was such a welcomed change on my legs for all three laps. And the final two miles of each lap were rolling. My legs got so tight on the insane two-mile up that the downs were a big relief and I was able to pick up my pace significantly. However, the downhill also got a little scarier with each lap, too. It was raining - dumping actually - and with that many people going running it became a serious mud fest by the second lap. There were a couple of sections where I literally braced myself through my core and hips and surfed down the mud because I thought it was safer than trying to run step by step through it. I lost my footing a couple of times and nearly launched off the side of the trail. We did catch a few moments where there was no rain, but they were few and far between. By the end of the race I probably had an extra 10 pounds to lug around with my drenched clothes and mud filled shoes. I wish we had taken a picture of us before and after to really capture how muddy and wet it actually was. Kevin hung out with the girls and they cheered us through each transition with their cow bells.

Timmy did awesome - he came in 3rd overall!

Alex was amazing and was smiling all the way to her frolick at the finish.

I did try to smile, but the camera was apparently taking too long and only caught me looking exhausted - which I was.

All-in-all, it was a great run. Those dang two-mile uphills on each loop slowed my overall pace down significantly, but it was encouraging to be able to pick it up as much as I did even on the third lap. I'm not too concerned with my time on this one. I'll take it for my first ever 25k, and a trail race at that. I am surprisingly less sore and tired than I thought I would be, but we'll see how things feel tomorrow.