Ran a trail 5K yesterday , actually 3.2 miles – the race director and others acknowledged it to be long. They said no one was going to PR on this course anyway, and that was certainly the truth. There were a good number of the local high school cross country boys and girls teams out there, as it was a fundraiser for their program. The course was muddy, lots of twists and turns, lots of ditches and one small mountain of a hill. There was little opportunity to pass, and few were doing this anyway, as the humidity was about 90+ percent and the temp around 80. I signed up the night before on a whim – I figured I was going to be doing a training run that morning anyway, might as well make it more interesting. Trail running certainly is a lot different than the roads – I was always having to watch right in front of me to avoid trees/roots/rocks/etc. It was a nice change of pace, both literally and figuratively. No way to keep up a sub-7 pace here.
I used the big hill about half a mile into the race to pass a bunch of people and basically held my ground from there. I did pass one or two the rest of the way. Averaged about 7:30 pace or so and finished in 23:41. Everyone was about 2-3 minutes off their road 5k times, so I was OK with the time. I finished in 16th place, 3rd in age group. I was pretty happy with the place, as 8 of those ahead of me were high school cross country kids.
Tour de Blue Shoes 