Context: Ran my first ever timed race this past weekend, the first of at least 4 trail races I will be doing this year. Likely to be more. In addition, this was a training run for an upcoming half-marathon which I will be running.

Training: Recently upped my mileage to about 30-40 miles per week, with a long run on Saturdays, a mid-week run in the 8-9 mile range sandwiched between 10k runs, and a 5k thrown on top of all that. The good is that the base mileage is finally there. Nutrition and rest wise, well, that could have been done better...had three beers the night before and didn't get too much sleep since a friend from PDX came up to run this as well.

The Race: Show up. Beautiful area, fairly minimal set-up. Everybody is nice and accommodating, and the staff is super easy to work with when I ask for a shirt my friend was hoping to pick-up. She wasn't able to make it, as she's dealing with another injury. Bummer. See another friend who is signed up for the half-marathon and actually ends up PR'ing it. We have very different days. This was really my first race, and there was a ton of anticipation and excitement coming out the gate, which means HI I RAN WAY TOO FAST/HARD considering the not-so-good things I put in my body last night. That, combined with the heat (probably about 80 out), lack of any sort of wind in the woods, and my general terrible pacing meant that I met my lower of two goals, but was much slower than my road 10ks.

Mile 2.5 rolls around and I have no idea how much farther it is, I figured it was way closer to 3.1 at that point and time to start the second loop. Bonking ensues. Aka holy shit, why is this so hard today!?.

Lots of turns, quick turns, very few straight sections, and my hip mobility really slowed me down going through a lot of the uphill turns and twists. Just another thing to work on.

Aftermath: Signed up for a couple more trail runs, and am very committed to doing a better job with adding quality runs and maybe a yoga night to my schedule.