This was the third in a series of 4 nighttime trail races. The first was at Pedernales State Park, where I placed 3rd in the females and had a really great run (3:06:12). The second was at Muleshoe Bend, where I drastically underestimated the course, placed 6th and ended up running 45 minutes slower than at Pedernales (3:51:54). That one was HARD. So, you can imagine my anxiety when Joe Prusaitis (race director of Tejas Trails) said that he thought that the Colorado Bend course was the hardest out of the four. Harder than Muleshoe??!! Uh-oh. But after a difficult uphill section in the first few miles, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of flat and downhill that seemed to be the rest of the course. I kept waiting for some immensely hard uphill or technical area to pop up, but it never came. Or so it felt. Talking to people afterward, I heard many talk of a technical downhill area that they felt was particularly hard. I remember the section they were talking about, though, compared to Muleshoe, I didn't think it was very difficult. My GPS data showed me that perhaps my memory blocked it out, though, as there was a fairly significant hill that covered all of mile 12 with spillover into mile 13 as well.
It's interesting to think about what different people perceive as more or less difficult. I think it all depends on whether you have more difficulty with hills vs. technical terrain and probably a lot to do with how you trained leading up to a particular race, what you ate on race day and generally how you feel the day of. I think perhaps the differences in my training the week before and diet day of both races likely had a fair bit to do with my perception of which was harder and why. (On that note, my diet yesterday consisted of cereal in the morning, no coffee (but I wanted some soooo badly), about 1/2 a cantaloupe and baby carrots with roasted red pepper hummus. About 2 hours before the race, I ate my two mangos diced up and mixed with fresh blueberries and a banana. And 20 minutes before the start, black cherry Shotbloks. Don't know if the menu helped, but I felt good, so I'm going to repeat that on September 1st for the Reveille Ranch race.)
I was especially concerned going into last night's race that the last two segments were long (nearly 6 and 5 miles respectively), and I was afraid that I was going to run out of water between aid stations - especially being that it was at the end of the course when I'm typically drinking more, but it actually ended up being fine. I carried two water bottles - not ideal, but not terrible either - and had a pretty good system at the aid stations that got me in and out, refueled, re-iced (a major + for having to wear a sports bra - great place to pour a cup of ice) and on my way again.
Overall, I enjoyed the course, and I was there with some good friends, which made it even more fun. Plus, there was a meteor shower last night - great night to be outside staying up late and camping. My time came back down - 3:26:__ (official results not posted yet), which put me 3rd female and 23rd overall. I'm going into the last race in first place in the series (even though I haven't placed higher than 3rd - the gals that are beating me aren't doing the whole series), and excluding some major catastrophe, I should be able to pull out the series win :) Going into this race, I was 50 minutes ahead of the 2nd place female, and I'm 11th overall. My goal was to see if I could move up ahead of any of those top 10 guys. I'll follow up on that once the results are posted.
I'll close with a little haiku I came up with somewhere around mile 11 last night:
Nighttime run on trail
By myself but not alone
Spider eyes glow bright
