What a fun day! Ashton really puts on a good small town race, and it draws a high percentage of vacation racers from across the country (even in the middle of COVID-19). For having decided to do this race 5 days earlier, it went surprisingly well. Some minor hiccups were chafing on the skin around my left Achilles tendon began at mile 10 and continued through out the race, and I got a rock in my shoe at mile 3 and couldn't get it out unless I wanted to completely untie my shoe (which I chose not to do). I paced pretty decently, but I also was pushing myself very hard. I did not expect half of the race to be low-maintenance gravel/ATV trails (I did not read the course description closely enough I guess). I spent a good part of the race chasing people, and I caught a lot of them on the big climbs in miles 17-20 (at the end of the race, I found out a lot of them were actually relay runners, oops!). Mile 26 definitely had that "holding on for dear life" feeling. I went straight to the medical tent afterwards for some help with my chafed ankle. My sock and shoe had both soaked up quite a bit of blood (2nd time I've done something like that). If STG ever gets cancelled again, I'll definitely consider doing this race again.
Note to self: PB&J sandwiches are a pretty nice snack for carb-loading the day before.
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