No Frills, All Thrills 5 Mile Trail Run

Let me say that the Brighton Area Road Striders put on a great race. They said “no frills” but the race was superb. They had the miles all marked (and pretty darn close to what Forerunner said too), they had people at all the turns, red cones marking off accidental detours, and they path was marked with red spraypaint in the dirt so if you were looking down the whole time, you couldn’t miss the trail. Nice!

And let me also say that the after race food was GREAT! This is a big thing with me. They had bananas, sliced oranges, water and Gatorade, Fig Newtons, homemade oatmeal cookies, store bought cookies of all kinds, sliced bagels (that were still very fresh), Reeses Peanutbutter cups (the minis), and even home made raisin bread! Just a real smorgasbord (sp?) of food. I was in heaven.

We all got some nice black cotton gloves with the No Frill All Thrills name on them too. I didn’t wear them in the race because I didn’t know how the trail was and didn’t want to ruin them right away.

It was VERY cold starting this AM. Super high winds and about 40F made for some chilly waiting for the start. One of the things I record in my running log is temps and what I wore. According to my log, I could wear shorts and a long sleeve/short sleeve combo. With the wind it was very cold while I was outside, and I was afraid I had really underdressed. All the other guys had lycra. I was debating whether to wear my jacket but decided to follow my log data and trust it.

At the start line I ran into the guy who lived next door to me when I lived in Ann Arbor. I hadn’t seen him in a few years and he had grown a beard so I hadn’t recognized him.

A verbal “Go” from the guy with a bullhorn and we were off. The first mile was really running on the grass along side the road to get to the trails, so it wasn’t so bad. Then we headed into the woods, but even there it wasn’t so bad. No mud, no snow, just hard packed trail which was pretty wide. There were car tracks so you can see how driveable it was.

There were a couple hills, but they were pretty gentle. Nothing like up in Pinckney where the 1/2 is going to be. Given how nice this course was, I was able to really pour it on. I was pretty pleased with how tight my times ended up being.

mile 1 - 8:11
mile 2 - 7:52
mile 3 - 7:45
mile 4 - 7:42
mile 5 - 7:52

Total unofficial time: 39:24, if I added that right, 7:53 pace. I hit the lap button instead of the stop button at the end so I got some extra time on the Forerunner.

The first mile we were pretty bunched up because they had us running on the side of the road and it was like a big gully and it was hard to really spread out. Going out slowly was probably best anyway.

I was happy with how I did on the hills too. Did alot of arm pumping and found myself passing people there easily. On the downhills I just let the legs fly again and leaned into it. With the wide trail I was able to get around most folks without much trouble.

I can pretty much say I gave it everything for this because the last .5 mile was really rough. I had a small side stitch which I told to “SHUT UP”. :D If there was anyone coming up behind me in this race near the finish, there’s no way I had anything left to give for speed. When I stopped at the finish for them to get my bib strip, the woman held onto my shoulder for a moment and I couldn’t figure out why, and then I realized it was because I was swaying!

So a really fun race and I’m really happy with the time. The course was nice and even and gave me a chance for a nice default-PR time for my first 5 mile race.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 2nd, 2005 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Races. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.