I've been running really light mileage the past couple weeks and was itching to have something to do this weekend. I LOVE the whole process of trail racing, except the going to bed early and having to poop 4-6 times before the race even begins, but in the fall it is much easier to bury :) enough about that...i drove up about 2hrs 20 min to just west of albany, up this mountain to a state park. when i got to the race it was an exciting atmosphere, there was a halloween theme with halloween sounds being blasted in the parking lot and their were people in gorilla costumes and a sketchy guy with a chainsaw walking around. it was good to see some old faces at the races. There were SO many people out today. The race started off and we ran through a fake graveyard past the guy lunging at us with a chainsaw. I started out in 20th place or so and sprinted ahead to 4th place before a muddy single track and quickly realized
i was definitely beyond threshold pace. After 2 miles i was passed by a guy i had beaten earlier in the year and he would go on to beat me by 3 minutes today. What was irksome was not being passed by robin hood at mile 5 but by being passed at about mile 8 by this guy who i didn't even know what his costume was. It wasn't like the people who passed me went by me in a flash it was this long and slow inevitable pulling away. I settled into a rhythm and felt dizzy for a bit and my stomach was not bad but i regretted eating a full lb or possibly more of imitation crab meat the night before. i wonder why i do such foolish things. so the passing was done by mile 8 and i just hoped no one else would catch me and i started to feel a bit better. i had a good scare by the 3rd of the 4th gorilla that jumped out at me. it was quite annoying, especially the chainsaw guy. the course got 3 inches of rain the night before so the course was quite muddy and had pools of water but not annoyingly so. very fast course with few hills and my biggest goal was to finish in sub 7 pace which i just did in 6:58. Overall not a bad race, but not great. I helped my best of 6 race point total today which was my main goal, and will need to race next weekend to get over 1000 points for the whole series. we'll see. such a beautiful day though. i did have a bit of a scare on the way back. i was kind of zoning out listening to a book on tape on the highway when a large stag came out of the corner of my eye, inches from the road about 20 feet in front of the car. I didn't get an adrenaline rush because the threat was gone before i could register it, but if the deer didn't pull up at the last second it would have been BAD news. something else sketchy happened when i went on a "run" with my dad when i got back. it was close to getting dark on the way down the mtn and he noticed what looked like a large animal organ. i thought/hoped it was just some hugebut it was clearly notand it was fresh. we had not noticed it before about an hour earlier and there were no cars around at the parking lot nor was there any blood or bones around. there was a partial hide of a skunk but the organ was larger than the entire skunk. we were close to the car at that point then heard a substantial rustle in the leaves and that made things worse. who knows, i guess it's just an unsolved mystery. will think twice about running there towards dark alone.
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