2010 Ridgeline Ramble
Posting this a week late. My wife, Diana, and I did the Ridgeline Ramble as a relay team (10k each). Diana rocked it. She beat her expected time by 20 mins. She's only been running again for about two weeks, so this is pretty damn sweet. I finished, and did ok. But, I was sick, and knew it affected my time. I ran a 1:06, which was 6 mins slower than I'd hoped for. Hard to say how much the illness affected me, but I clearly felt low on energy. I just don't know if that means it cost me 3 minutes, 5, or 10. But really, this was my first trail race, and all that really mattered was finishing with a solid performance (for me). That I did.
One thing that I'm finding interesting, is that within a few minutes of finishing, I felt fine, and was joking with a friend who ran with me, that I should go do the rest. Couldn't have done that, but with running, I'm finding that, so far, I can recover pretty quick. The only thing is that this also makes me feel like I didn't go hard enough, or certainly that I didn't finish as strong as I could have. I'm used to coming home from what would be a "hard" mountain bike ride (say a 4+ hour solid ride) and wanting to just veg on the couch the rest of the day. With running that's yet to happen. They're different, and I probably have cycling to thank for some endurance, and am still getting used to the muscle and joint use in running. The nice thing is that it makes me think that doing 20k/half marathon, or potentially a bit more is going to be possible this year.
What's also fun is to see how fast the top folks are. Jenn Shelton from Ashland, who's a top trails racer, absolutely smoked the course at 1:28, taking 4th overall, and beating the women's record by 9 minutes. Jeremy Tolman won the mens, and set a new mens record as well, at 1:21. Heck, that's only 15 minutes longer than me for double the distance! The notion of running a 6.5 minute mile on trails is in that unattainable category in my mind. I'm shooting to be able to do 9 (which I've done just about for 5k distances, so I think it's an attainable goal).
Most of all though, I'm having fun with this, enjoying it. I haven't raced (bikes, or anything) for many years now, and I'm just enjoying taking a very casual approach back to it. Not completely ignorant of times or placings or whatever, but for now, just competing with myself, and happy not to be last :)
