I'm a dirty girl

Okay, so my sneakers don't look that dirty, but I had already knocked off a lot of the loose mud. And I decided not to blind the world with my pasty white legs covered in mud. Man, but that mud just seeped right through the mesh in the toebox of my shoes - the inside of my shoes were squishy.

I just got back from the Pilot Knob 15K Trail Race. What is that next to my sneakers? I thought you'd never ask! That would be my second place "trophy" for my age group. Yes, I'm wicked awesome. I know. The piece of paper attached to my "glacial till," as they called it, is a little geology lesson (I'll leave it to Pete, our resident glacier guy, to make fun of any bad science, if there is any):
Man, I forgot how much harder running on trails is than on the road. This was a really hilly trail with lots of mud pits and lots of debris to trip on as you bolted down the hills. But it was a lot of fun. The weather was gorgeous. It was a really small race. After mile 5 I didn't see another soul until the end, neither in front of me or in back of me. So it was rather like a nice little jog in state park. My GPS batteries died at mile 1.5, so I had no clue of my pace the entire way, as that was also my timer. That actually made it really nice too - I just ran and didn't stress about how fast I was going. My only indication of pace was when Barrett, a guy from the Nordic Ski Club who went up with me and who is fast, passed me at his mile 9 marker when I was about to hit my mile 6 marker (the course wasn't the same loop over and over, but rather four loops that occasionally criss-crossed each other). I decided that since he ran the same half marathon as me last weekend in 1:18, that it was okay if I was running 150% of his pace.

Okay here is where my confession comes in. No, I am not going to confess to kneecapping some poor girl with a fallen tree branch. So yeah, I got second place. But that is apparently because women aged 20-29 don't like to run 15K trail races. Yes, there were only two of us. My time was almost embarrasing too - 1:49. But really, trail running is a whole other ball game than road running. The last quarter mile was on a road and I hit that and still was able to pick it up for the last bit and then go into to a full on sprint to the end. Actually, based on Barret's time (1:18), my last three miles were more or less at 10 minute pace. And I actually felt good those three miles and felt like I was running decently. I decided that I shouldn't look at my actual time but the ratio of the best time to my time since that sort of takes out the difficulty variable. It was a small race, but the winner just ran the Boston Marathon in 2:30, so there were competitive people there. For the half-marry last weekend that ratio was exactly 1:2. Today that ratio was a little less even (the winner did it in 57 minutes). So I am content. And it was a fun running day. And I got a prize! Yay for me! You can bet that I am going to use my glacial till trophy to hold down the napkins at our barbeque tomorrow.