I was in no way in shape for this event. Of course, I could cover the distance, but I wasn't conditioned for the intensity of the hills, as a result, I suffered on the hills. My quads were begging me to stop. Actually, I'm really surprised that they (my quads) allowed me to scale these mountains. I may be exaggerating a little, but seriously, these hills killed me. I did recover nicely and quickly, almost immediatly, after hitting flat ground, though. I want to mention that because I think it says something about my fitness level and I need to be reminded of that sometimes.

There is nothing I would do differently. I would PREFER to be in better shape for it next year, and I'm sure I will be. I didn't approach this as a race, so I'm not disappointed at all with the outcome. I'm rather happy that I completed it.

I warmed down by basically falling into the arms of my sweetie and then sitting down for a minute. It was only about a minute. After that, I was ready to move on. I had some soup, which needed pepper and, you'll almost never catch me saying this, salt, too.


My ability to perform better was limited by my avoiding hills for the past however long. I haven't been training on them because I had a bum hamstring, which reminded me of it's existence on the second hill. The fact that I hadn't covered the distance of the race in an awfully long time MAY have had a little to do with my performance, although, I'm not really sure about that, but I'm mentioning it anyway.


I love this race. I love everything about it. It's a hard race. That's certain, but it's not so hard, provided you're fit enough, that you can't enjoy it, unless, of course, you don't like trail running.

A year ago, at the Dirty Bird 06, is when I met my sweetie, so I am kind of making the DB a must every year in honor of that special day :-)