Dawn on the Run

Okay I will try to keep the writing short. Karen already did an awesome job on posting about this race. So I’ll try to stick to a “play by play” pictorial.

You know you’re in trouble and the race will be muddy when you’re hubby gets sent home because of rain. Thankfully it had stopped before the race. With hubby home it meant I had the truck so I could find my own way there and meet up with Karen at the race start.

Getting to the race start means climbing uphill. Yet another reason to know you are in trouble. Uphill always means downhill and more uphill.

There’s always a few new people and today was no exception. I turned around to hear someone say “I read your blog!” They were newbies and recognized me. I almost feel famous. Typical of any race, one mills around chatting with friends, some of which you only see during cross-country race season.

The 10km started 5 minutes before us. I was thinking maybe I should have started with them. Then maybe I would have at least had more than 5 minutes with people still behind me…lol.

Now being a cross-country race it always means hills. The start of the race is pretty much downhill and then ya go back up, up and up again.

But no matter what the course throws at you, enjoy it. The scenery is beautiful and if you can’t laugh at yourself why bother.

Eventually one heads from the open fields to the trees. The 4km & 8km course overlaps and I get to see people again. At least for awhile.

In the treed area there were lots of uphills, downhills, switchbacks and little streams, puddles to jump over or run through.

Now one of these muddy uphills was really slick. Karen describes it well in her post. I lost a lot of time on this hill. Up three feet and slide back down one. I grabbed tree roots and they pulled out of the ground. No help. I grabbed tree branches and they broke off in my hand. I tried clawing my way up but only managed to gain a few inches. Finally Julie, same age group as me but about half my size goes up the other side, wraps herself around a tree and hands me a branch. “Here Dawn, grab this”. Well I had tucked my glasses that kept fogging up inside my shirt so I really couldn’t see. But I had to laugh cause no way she is gonna haul me up. More likely I’d take her back down the hill. I had visions of us both landing on our backsides in the stream below. Somehow I made it to a root clump in the middle and used that to leverage my way over as Julie pulled me out of the mud hole.

The picture shows another runner struggling up the same mess I had just made my way out of. THANKS JULIE!.

I lost way too much time on that uphill. One by one more runners past me. I knew I was in trouble when Karen went sailing by. Sheeeeshhh not only was I now the last 4km to finish, I was gonna be finishing behind the last of the 8km racers. Oh well. After a few more “dipsy do hills” and streams there’s this huge downhill, wow. Harvey was course marshall there and told me “Forget safety, just blast down”. I tried but was afraid of wiping out so I did a little side to side to keep up the momentum with no disasters. The lady at the bottom thought I was dancing. Nope its a slolum ski trick I used to do. Now what goes down, must come up and as I look ahead I see the finish but its uphill! Who designs a race course with an uphill finish….sheeeshhhhh. Now remember my rule, No Walking to a Finish. So I pumped my arms and sprinted uphill to finish. Karen got a great picture – heh look I can multi-task – sprint finish and pick my nose at same time. Honest I wasn’t but it sure looks that way.

Man would you look at my pants. At the end of the race I was covered in mud and burrs. My shoes, hands, everything mud, everywhere. Karen’s comment “Good thing you ain’t ridin with me”. Sheeeshhhh.

I changed shoes and threw a towel over the seat. Hubby would likely of had a hissy fit if he’d seen me getting in our truck looking like I did. But, heh, what he doesn’t see won’t hurt him. At the school later I joined the gang. We enjoyed our soup and goodies. I even won socks. Then it was time to race home and get ready to head off for my next race.

My official time 56:20. Not great, but not bad. Believe it or not there were still two people from the 4km behind me and 3 from the 8km. So I wasn’t last! Cool!

NOTE: It took over 20 minutes to remove all the burrs from my pants, shirt, etc.