My friend from the UK was going to be in town, and he had
found this local race in Asheville, NC, so I figured that I joined him. It helped that I had only managed one run
that week, so I already tapered for the race!
It was a bare-bones trail run. No
pressure, and something different. He
ended up not being able to make it due to a flight re-direct due to
weather. I made the drive up, overshot
the race location by a few miles because of a questionable address on the
website (someone else had done the same thing, so I wasn’t the only one). Parking was right next to the road, so others
who came along afterwards could probably tell where to stop more easily. As I waited for the race start, I even found
a geocache right at the entrance to the park, like 20 feet away from where I
parked! Score! My first one in NC.
It was a small race that had gotten some news coverage, so
their turnout was higher than expected, at around 55. The course was two x 5-mile figure-8s, with
an aid station in the middle of the 8 that you’d pass 4 times. The race start was a long and steep uphill,
and I’m typically slow on uphills. There
was a 5-miler going on at the same time.
Everyone was tentative about starting at the front, because it was
nearly single-track, and you didn’t want to be the one holding everyone
up. I tried to stay way to the side,
even though I was at the front.
As we headed out, the hard uphill began. I got passed, as expected… fortunately, this
part was wide enough to pass. The path
got narrow. At some points, the single
track was waaay narrow, with a big dropoff on the side – tedious! It’s a great trail to have accessible for
locals, but they must be rolling the dice on not tripping and falling off the
side, each time they go on a run here.
I passed another person back, then was behind two other
people for a good chunk of the 2nd 8th of the race. At first, it was good to have them keep my
pace reasonable so that I didn’t overdo it.
I had exerted myself way too much during the 1st 8th
of the race trying to not hold up those behind me too much. After a while, though, especially on the
dowhills where I had to brake a lot to not run into them, I asked to pass –
freedom! From there, I caught up to
another person.
I was wearing my Salomon S-Lab trail racing shoes. I had raced a large-gravel trail 10K in them
before, and they stayed on well. I was
careful to try to keep the pull-down laces well tucked. I had snagged the lace on a root in an early
section of the race, though, so it was flopping a bit. In the 4th 8th of the
race, on a thankfully slightly wider (maybe 1.5 shoulder widths) and flat portion
of the trail, I stepped on the loose lace and totally ate it. My right knee and my palms got cut up, with a
couple of scrapes on my belly, too. Good
thing I fell forward, and not to the side!
I hoped that I hadn’t done my knee any permanent damage. I was in shock and in pain for the first
couple of minutes, and I stood by the side of the trail and recovered. One of the guys that I had passed, passed me
back. I started jogging again,
slowly. It may be like that for the rest
of the race…
I finished the first loop, and back up the big hill. I was doing a more normal running motion
again. Back around the previously
encountered trails, checking out my wounds as I ran. Lots of dirt in the wounds. My motivation for keeping going during the 2nd
5-mi loop was finishing quickly so that I could get the race done and get the
wounds cleaned up.
It was hard to tell how I was doing, position-wise, since
you didn’t know how many were doing the 5er, and how many were doing the
10er. The finish was as steep down as it
was up, but it was a good feeling to finish.
Not the best-paced race, and the fall certainly added a few minutes, but
I finished 1st for the women!
I was happy to grab some water and try to clean up the wounds a
bit. No antibiotics, though… I want to
minimize the chance of drug resistance.
The race had a fun, casual atmosphere. Instead of medals, they had cute/unique
pirate figurines with black ribbons on them.
That fit the theme of the race, and it’s cool to have something fun
other than a medal every now and then.
The prize was a big pirate flag, which was also creative.
After the race, I went into downtown Asheville and did a
quick geocache grab. I would’ve explored
a bit more, but parking is so expensive there!
5 cents = 3 minutes…. I know it’s not much, but mentally, it doesn’t
seem right… a money-eating machine. I
ran to the cache, in order to make it back to the car in time. I had found a couple of coins on the ground
at the race, which made me feel better.
I actually found an Arizona flag keychain trackable at the cache and
took it with me to the car. But when I
looked up its mission, I saw that it was racing similar-looking flags back to
Arizona, and I figured that Asheville got more traffic than where I’m from, so
I left it there. Fun idea, though.
After that, I did a few more caches, before going to Highland Brewing Co for a tour.
RACE RESULT: 1:33:22, 9:20 ave.
