{"id":12549,"date":"2010-11-21T12:49:43","date_gmt":"2010-11-21T16:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foodembrace.com\/?p=12549"},"modified":"2010-11-21T12:49:43","modified_gmt":"2010-11-21T16:49:43","slug":"2010-muddy-feet-trail-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/2010\/11\/2010-muddy-feet-trail-race\/","title":{"rendered":"2010 Muddy Feet Trail Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It was Thursday of last week that I learned about the Muddy Feet trail race that was happening on Saturday.\u00a0 I was talking on Twitter about trail running and about another race I have planned for next month.\u00a0 My twitter friend, Emily, said that she didn’t think the race was a trail race per say but just went around the perimeter of the park.<\/p>\n

Well that’s kind of a bummer, right?\u00a0 She said she and her husband were running the Muddy Feet trail run on Saturday and it was on an actual trail.<\/p>\n

I totally signed up.<\/p>\n

I may or may not be addicted to trail running which may or may not be the reason why I signed up right away at the last minute.<\/p>\n

We are lucky here in Columbus because we not only have a thriving bustling city but we also have parks and water very close by.\u00a0 This race was taking place at Alum Creek and there were two distances to pick from,\u00a0 4.5 miles or 6.5 miles.<\/p>\n

You know which one I picked.<\/p>\n

Scott and I were determined to not be a hot mess for this race and we almost succeeded!\u00a0 I totally forgot something which I’ll mention soon.<\/p>\n

Saturday was an extremely foggy morning with a weather advisory out for most of the morning.\u00a0 It was the densest fog I have seen so far during my time here in Ohio.<\/p>\n

We arrived early and used the bathroom which you can see behind me in the first picture.\u00a0 Basically the bathroom is a fancy outhouse.\u00a0 Three stalls, no lights, and a smell to knock you on your ass.\u00a0 It was a bit chilly and since I had 1\/2 an hour before the race started we went back to the car to sit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>About 15 minutes till start time I headed back to the bathroom and discovered that if you used the stall closest to the door, the smell wasn’t so bad thanks to fresh air blowing in.\u00a0 I also had to wrestle with my pants because the strings knotted up.\u00a0 I did a quick warmup jog around the parking lot and then headed to the start.\u00a0 Check out that fog!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>We were told that there would be two water stations but I didn’t hear the details on those.\u00a0 The cap was 400 people for the race but I’m pretty sure there were not 400 people entered.\u00a0 I don’t know how many people were there but it was a small race, probably the smallest I have run in so far.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t long after we crossed the start and headed down the trail that I realized what I forgot, my watch!\u00a0 Doh!\u00a0 This meant I had no concept of time or pace at all during my run.<\/p>\n

Emily said that it could be really muddy so I made sure to wear my old winter running pants and old grungy socks.\u00a0 My shoes I didn’t worry about since I’m heading into winter, they are going to get snow and salt gunk on them anyway.<\/p>\n

About 5 minutes or so in to the race, we circled back around past the start.\u00a0 Scott and I didn’t think we’d see each other again so he headed back to the car already and I missed him.\u00a0 I was a little bummed out but understood.\u00a0 Plus if you weren’t running, it was really cold outside because the fog made things damp.<\/p>\n

The trail run was great!\u00a0 It was all grass trails with rolling hills sprinkled throughout.\u00a0 It wasn’t as intense as the Buckeye Classic<\/a> but still a challenging course.\u00a0 Where Highbanks had trails that were gravel and dirt and packed earth, Alum creek was straight grass trails.\u00a0 However there were leaves everywhere making things slippery if you didn’t pay attention.\u00a0 There were also lots of tree roots and branches to watch out for.\u00a0 There were drain pipes, dips, and holes to jump over, and big tire grooves that made it impossible to get even footing.<\/p>\n

You were constantly watching your balance, making sure you didn’t slip or tumble downhill, and pushing yourself up the hills.\u00a0 The trail was pretty wide so there was no worries about feeling squished.<\/p>\n

I felt like I was running really slowly but the upside to trail running is that pace doesn’t matter because you are dealing with so many other things, pace goes out the window.<\/p>\n

I was behind two girls for the first half of the race.\u00a0 The pace was decent and so I paced them until the first water station.\u00a0 It was at the point where the 4.5ers split from the 6.5ers.\u00a0 They were running the 4.5 and were gone at the split.\u00a0 A lot of people were gone at the split actually.\u00a0 After that point I was mostly running by myself.\u00a0 There were two girls behind me and a fella in front of me but we were all spread pretty far apart.<\/p>\n

Even though the start had been really cold, I got hot during the run!\u00a0 OY! I unzipped my sweatshirt as much as I could.\u00a0 My running bib was attached so I couldn’t take off the sweatshirt.\u00a0 I pushed up my sleeves and eventually took off my gloves.\u00a0 I had to carry those since I didn’t have anywhere to stash them.\u00a0 That was annoying but what can you do?\u00a0 Push on through!<\/p>\n

Finally came up on the second water station and I asked what mile we were at.\u00a0 He said it was about the 5.2 mile mark.\u00a0 Whooo!\u00a0 Not too much farther and I would have my second trail run of the season (my third in my running career) under my belt.<\/p>\n

There were a few more hills and then a lovely long flat section in an open field.\u00a0 As I circled back around into the woods a guy came running past telling me the finish was less than a quarter mile away.<\/p>\n

Whooo!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Yeah so close!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Then I spotted Scott and our friends, Emily and Jim standing on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When I spotted my finish time you could have knocked me over with a feather.\u00a0 6.5 trail miles completed in 1:10, hell yeah!<\/p>\n

Then I got more surprises once I crossed the finish line.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The person congratulating me at the finish was actually a Daily Mile<\/a> friend, Rebecca!\u00a0 We even live in the same town but haven’t had a chance to meet before now.\u00a0 She works for Premier races on the weekends doing the time.\u00a0 Nice, right?<\/p>\n

Or course she caught me right at the finish so it took my brain a second to realize that I was having a conversation.\u00a0 Ha!<\/p>\n

My surprises weren’t finished yet!\u00a0 She told me I won a prize!<\/p>\n

I placed third in my age group.\u00a0 Whoooo!\u00a0 That’s my first ever prize I won at a race!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I walked over to where everyone was standing and chatted with them for a bit.\u00a0 Emily and Jim are Twitter friends turn real-life friends and the bonus is that they are runners too!<\/p>\n

We were all getting cold and headed off back to our cars to get back home.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>No medal for this race so you get a picture of me with my chocolate soymilk in my snazzy JayRobb travel bottle that I won from Kim’s<\/a> site.<\/p>\n

If you’re looking to get into trail running or want to try out a race to see if you like it, I highly recommend running Muddy Feet.\u00a0 Not only do you get to choose your distance but the trail is great for an intro into trail running.<\/p>\n

Will I run it again?\u00a0 For sure!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was Thursday of last week that I learned about the Muddy Feet trail race that was happening on Saturday.\u00a0 I was talking on Twitter about trail running and about another race I have planned for next month.\u00a0 My twitter friend, Emily, said that she didn’t think the race was a trail race per say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[79,52],"tags":[62,53],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4KYWa-3gp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}