The race had a format I've never experienced before. They took the average of the ages of the team and applied it to a formula. This resulted in your teams handicap, in my case it was O. What that meant was the A's started first and then each letter/group was released at about a 5 minute interval. The first group was off at 0700, I started at 0750.
There were about 5 people in my group. We took off fairly easy. It was a very steep downhill for the first half mile on an old asphalt road. I pulled ahead of my group after chatting with them for a bit and tried to settle into a steady pace. I soon found out that wasn't going to be possible. The road eventually turned into a muddy trail suitable for single-track mountain biking.
I started to catch up to the earlier groups at around 4 miles or so. The constant up and downs were starting to take their toll on my legs. I wasn't able to counter the treacherous footing as easily and started to make the ocassional slip. I did my best to keep my shoes dry in an attempt to avoid blisters, but soon gave up on that idea. After mile 6, I was so tired of trying to dodge mud and avoid overhanging vegitation that I just started running thru it.
By mile 8 I had caught up to the lead off group, the A's. People were very nice, when they heard or sensed you coming up behind them they moved to the side as soon as it was feasible. I got passed twice, once by the winner and once by the guy who took second. These guys were absolutely flying. They mud and questionable footing didn't seem to bother them at all. I must have fallen at least 5 times, my normal street running shoes just weren't up to handling the muddy trail.
The last mile to the turn around was downhill, which started to really aggrevate my knee that I twisted on an earlier fall. (As I type this, I have it propped up with a bag of frozen peas on it.) AT the turn around I met Heidi, who was going to do the return leg when her partner got there. I learned that my partner had not shown up, and since I was in no shape to do the return leg, that was the end of my race. Truth be told, I was a little disappointed because I ran down most of the people that started before me and we had a shot at placing well. But this race was not planned and my partner was assigned last minute so oh well. I had a great time and gained alot of experience trail running.

Buy trail running shoes.

Finished off the last 8 minutes of my planned 1:50 run.


Shoes and inexperience with trail running.


The HURT crew once again put on a fantastic race. These people are wonderful and a different kind of athlete. They alk about 56 mile training runs like a stroll in the park. For the 10 dollar sign up fee, we got a fantastic spread of food at the end that rivals of surpasses any race I've ever ran, including 70.3's.