Today was the Dirty Hurty half marathon. Brigham and I got out to Unity Park just in time to get our stuff and get on the bus at about 7am. I started out in a pack with coach, Brigham, and Josh and we just kind of joked around for the first quarter mile, but then it was all business. The weather wasn't bad but it was pretty muddy at the start, and afte the first few hills, coach, Brigham, and Josh started to distance themselves a little bit. My legs were pretty tired on the hills for the first part, but they started to feel better a few miles into the race, I think they just needed to warm up a bit. I had to take off my gloves and beanie about two miles into the race because I was starting to get pretty warm. Coach and Josh kept distancing themselves from me but Brigham stayed about 15-20 seconds ahead of me for most of the Barrel Roll loop. I started to catch Brigham when we got down to the trailhead and by the construction site, I was running with him. The site was really confusing so we wasted a bit of time looking for the right way to go, enough time for one other runner to get to the site and we kind of figured out where to go from there. I just stuck with the other runner for about the next mile and a half and we spaced ourselves from Brigham after an aid station. I felt pretty good so I decided to go ahead and start pushing the last mile. I distanced myself about 30 seconds from the other runner and finished back at Unity Park.
Overall I thought it was a great race. Brigham's watch said 12.9 miles and Scott's said 13.06 so I'm just guessing it was around 13. It was my first trail race and my first race longer than 3.65 miles, so I felt pretty good about how I did. I don't really know what my time was because I accidently hit the lap button on my watch about ten times while I was taking off my gloves, but Brigham got 1:37 so I'm guessing I was about 1:34-1:36. Really fun race, and I think it would be really fun to get in some more trail races! | 