Yesterday, my husband and I did the White Tail Trail Half Marathon. This was basically my second half marathon, but this time on trails. I never thought I would squeeze in a trail half marathon before my Indianapolis Monumental Half Marathon in November, which would be my third then! 🙂
Well, the trail run yesterday was a lot of fun. It was brutal, but fun! 🙂 My husband and I ran a few miles on that trail a couple of weeks before the race. But we didn’t get to check out other parts of the trail after that. Check out my blog post about it here.
I didn’t know there were so many hills in the entire 13-mile loop. The other parts have more hills, more obstacles and more river crossings. During the race, there were times that you had to make a complete stop in order to jump over big logs or go under tree branches. I was surprised and that race was definitely a challenge for me. Miles 6-12 was crucial. That’s where all the crrrazy hills were. I thought to myself, this was like Mud-stash 21k! LOL! Since there’s no way to exit from the trail if you decide to give up, you really have to do the whole thing in order to get out. It’s like you have no choice but to finish! But no, I wasn’t thinking of giving up. I just had that random thought in my mind while I was running the course. LOL! Don’t you have crazy random thoughts too when running? 🙂
Here’s me, ready to leave our house. It was chilly that morning before the race. Low 50s High of 71.
The race started at 9am. We got to the parking lot around 8:15am. I had to leave my jacket in the car because I knew I would get hot when I start running. So here I am, freezing.
We were transported from the parking lot to the start line by those school buses.
Me, freezing while waiting to get on the bus.
I normally run on trails on weekends but I have never ran longer than 8 miles on a trail. I think running on trails is way harder than running on paved roads. Your body gets more worked out when you run on trails. During the race, at mile 11, I was already starting to feel tired. I was already pushing myself to run but I could only do few minutes and then walk to take a break and catch my breath. And I did that through mile 12. And yes, there were still hills during those times. The moment I saw those bright orange flags at the finish line, that was when I really pushed myself to run. I just wanted to finish!
I finished in 3 hours and 3 minutes. I thought that was not bad at all considering it was my first race on a crazy hilly trail. This extreme adventure is worth taking. This is one of the best ‘firsts’ that I have ever engaged myself in. It wouldn’t be my last, either. 🙂 I am still considering doing a race on a trail in the future. But I realized that running on trails needs a lot of skill and training. I need to do longer runs on trails for my training from now on, and I will be back next time, more prepared, with my battle face on!
Our medals! 🙂
My husband and I spent a few minutes lying on the grass after the race to relax and rest. I felt cold after running and the warmth of the sun was just a nice feeling.
What better way to do after the race than to eat good food! So, my husband and I decided to go to our favorite hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant and splurged on Chicken Tikka Masala, Goat Biryani, and Garlic Naan. I was so hungry and seemed like that was one of my best meal ever!
So, this is our faces when we are hungry
I get really cranky and my husband gets crazy when we’re hungry.
…and here’s my face when the food arrived! 🙂 LOL!
That’s it for now!
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! 🙂
Ja on the RUN 