Today ran the "Run With The Foxes" Trail Half Marathon at Morgon-Monroe State Forest. Pretty good race. Took the wrong turn, twice, ended up with 14.98 on the Garmin. It may have been more than that as the Google Earth tracking on my computer shows some gaps throughout the race. The race started out pretty slow as once we got into the woods, we were single file. This was the only thing that kept me close to the leader. Once we broke free from the others, I was in second and he just started to pull away and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to go with him. We got a "lot" of rain this week in Indiana, so the course was a real muddy mess, and the streams were much wider and deeper than previous years. I actually completely wiped out 4 times, the first time, jumping through one of the streams that was a foot deep. I totally misjudged the bank and wiped out and landed on my right arm. At first I thought I broke it, but it may be just a bone bruise. It's swollen, purple and achy. It was at three miles during an open field stretch that I last saw the leader. At 7 miles, someone was catching me, I could hear him "landing" and "splashing" behind me. We got to one point where we had an open stretch so I decided to really hammer it down. I put a good 30 seconds on him in a mile before I realized that I was at some guys camp in the woods at a dead end. I stopped and the other guy told me he hadn't seen any pink ribbons for a long time. So we both turned around and started jogging backup up the hill I had just hauled butt down. Got back on course, got lost again about 10 miles in and had to double back and regaining a lot of the spots we had lost. In the meantime, I had wiped out a couple more times while pulling away from number 3. I don't know how many spots I lost on the first "lost" trek, but at that point, I made the race between me and number 3. Ended up with 1:54:18. My whole body is sore. On one of the wipeouts, I couldn't even do a single "pushup" to get back on my feet, I had to crawl my way back up. I've got scratches and bruises everywhere from grabbing trees, etc. Very tough race, but really glad I ran it. | 