What I remembered from the first time was a lot of mud. Not particularly hilly but very messy. And last time I was nursing an injury to my upper left thigh that I got when I slipped on some ice while walking the dogs, and it was a week after I limped around the Little Rock Marathon, and the goal was just to finish.
Again this year the goal was mostly just to finish but since I am neither injured (unless you count the knee that has not been quite right since I fell on it a couple of weeks ago) nor ill at the moment (knock on wood) I expected to be a bit faster. But mostly I just wanted an official finish time to count towards the participation awards for the trail series. Had a bit of trouble with that two years ago, when I initially did not show up in the results.
Didn't want to push too hard this year, because I do have that marathon coming up in a couple of weeks.
(I'm trying to finish this up now after starting it a week or so ago! Scary how much I have forgotten about this race already!)
Ok, so, the race started at 9 am so I drove up there around 8. It was pouring down rain during the drive and I got a little lost because the park was not quite where I remembered it being. Also, it did not help that my GPS thought the park was called "Camden-Deerfield Park" instead of "Landen-Deerfield Park." It made it a little harder to look it up since I was spelling it correctly and the GPS had it wrong!
Anyway, by the time I closed in on it the rain had stopped, thank goodness. The parking lot was filling up, so I had a little bit of a warmup jog back and forth getting my goodie bag. Yes, there was actually a goodie bag. It contained a green plastic cup and a bag of peanuts and a coupon for Dick's Sporting Goods. The shirts (I had ordered one because I'm running a little low on long sleeved cotton tees for winter dog walks) were bright green.
Here's a couple of funny memories from the packet pickup:
1) There was a chunky woman (not to be too judgmental) in front of me on line who was kind of snippy and rude when I asked her if she was on line, and then when she got up to the front of the line turned out she was on the WRONG line because she had not pre-registered. Ha.
2) After I got my bib and the goodie bag and was heading back to the car, a kind of goofy, chunky guy shoved his goodie bag at me and asked me if I would take it because he was "running." I had to explain to him that I was running, too. Did I not look like I was running? Ah, but that is the title of this blog, after all. I really don't look like a runner! Anyway, it was a half hour until the race start, and I can understand wanting to go do a warmup as I was about to get going on that myself but that didn't mean that you should expect me to take your goodie bag for you, weirdo. He said he didn't want it to go to waste. So I just said, well, why don't we put your bag here on this table and then if someone wants it they can have it?
I want to emphasize this guy was not a contender to win the race. But he seemed to think that I needed his peanuts. He was in a hurry to go running.
People who live in the Cincinnati suburbs: idiots?
There were also a number of people wearing shirts from the Spartan races, Warrior Dash, and that other thing, Muddy whatever it is called. Tough Mudder, that's it. I have a negative impression of these races, since I have heard and read that the courses are not really timed and you can even finish them without completing all of the obstacles. I don't think of them as real races. A couple of people were comparing whether running through fire (Warrior Dash?) or getting shocked (the Muddy thing?) was harder. I've seen pictures of the obstacles and the competitors and I would say neither is really such a big deal. But these fools like to delude themselves that they are accomplishing the ultimate athletic achievement. When I race, I want to pass as many of these people as I can.
Lots of people wearing green, many wearing the race shirt. I guess I should have tried a little harder to find something green to wear. I do have a couple of green tech shirts.
I headed back to my car, where I sat for a minute while I attached my bib to my little waist belt, which I have grown quite fond of for racing. No more dealing with pins for me!
After a bit, I headed out for some loops of the parking lot, which I knew would not prepare me for the muddy mess ahead. When I felt warm enough, I joined the rest of the participants near the start line. A guy in Vibrams asked me about which way we were starting. I told him what I remembered about the lap of the grassy field that they make us do before we head into the woods.
I looked, as usual, for a spot near people who looked like me. But nobody looks quite like me anymore. They are all so much younger and dressed in more fashionable running attire. I was wearing navy tights, a technical top from the State-to-State race (soon this will constitute half my running clothes since I do that race every year!) and an old nylon jacket which I had already take off and tied around my waist.
I saw one woman whom I recognized from previous trail races. She is slower than I am, so I just put myself a bit in front of her, and that seemed about right.
We started running, and immediately I felt that unpleasant cold wet feeling in my shoes that I remembered from last time as we splashed through the puddles in the field. I reminded myself that I just wanted to get a finish time and not get injured. As we made our loop of the field, the most irritating thing was the back kick and muddy splashes from the large men (Tough Mudders, no doubt).
There was a little bit of undulation that I remembered, a short but steep little downhill and then a little climb uphill, before we headed into the woods. I noticed a woman I had seen at the start whom I thought looked fast, but I was closing in on her. I would pass her before we got in the woods and she would finish quite a bit behind me.
Here's a pic from that early section of the race:
There I am in my black hat from the Delaware Marathon, # 411.
And then we were in the woods. My GPS wasn't going to get a signal, and I didn't want to wear my foot pod because of the creek crossings, so I was making do with just the stopwatch function of my watch. Two years ago I finished in 50 minutes, which included a lot of walking. This time I figured to be closer to 40 minutes even without trying very hard.
The trails in this park are pretty smooth without a lot of rocks and limbs. But the miserable weather had left them very muddy. So the riskiest thing was slipping in the mud. Early in the race there is a little stretch where you are on a narrow singletrack with the Little Miami River rushing by just below you to your right. So if you take a misstep to your right at all you are going to roll down the hill and into the river. That part was a little scary.
Unlike some of the trail races from the first few years of my trail running experience, I was able to hold my position most of the way without having to stop and let people go by. The only way to pass people on these trails is if they let you. I was moving at a comfortable pace, and since the most important thing was to finish uninjured and I didn't want to push it very hard, I just stayed where I was in the pack and didn't try to pass anybody in the woods.
At one point I did let a woman and a little boy go by, because she was making a big deal to him about how now they were going to pass people. Immediately I knew I had made a mistake because they really didn't pass anybody else except me. The woman was fast but the kid really wasn't.
Here's a pic from somewhere in the middle of the race:
You can see how muddy my feet are.
We had to slow down for the creek crossings. The water really was about knee-high on me, and it was deeper if you stepped off to the sides. It actually felt kind of good, because I was a little warm in the tights.
I just kept looking at my watch and guestimating how much more was left. Near the end, it seemed like we just kept going back and forth in the area behind the grassy field. I remembered that part from last time, too. It goes on for a long time like that. You think you're almost done, and at one point you even pop out of the woods but immediately have to go back again, and on and on and on.
(I'm trying to finish this up now because it is the night before my marathon!)
(OMG, now it is after the marathon, days later, and still I am trying to finish this one up!)
Ok, so we snake back and forth through the woods with the grassy field above us just out of reach. Finally we come out and basically make a circle around the outside of the field as we head for the finish line. It's about a quarter mile, maybe less. Now I am no longer afraid of falling down, so I pick up the pace and kick past several groups of runners who are ahead of me, which enables me to move up several places among the women.
Post race, they don't seem to have as much or as good quality of food as I remembered. I got my stuff out of the car and changed in the rest room. My shoes and tights were well-coated with mud, and it was nice to get into something dry. They had posted the results, so I checked to make sure I was on the list. And since I had not won my age group, there was no reason to stick around.
I was 168 of 275 runners, and 47 of 112 women. My time was 42:19, almost 8 minutes faster than two years ago, when I had that nasty hip flexor problem, but I was a bit disappointed because I had hoped to be even faster, and to finish a little higher up in the results. But since I was basically just jogging most of the way and trying to finish the race without hurting myself, I can't complain too much.
As I finish writing this report, I am injured once again, and am thinking that I really should not have been complaining at all!
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