Saturday was pretty rainy. My wife thought they would cancel the race. I told her trail races don't get cancelled because of weather. We showed up, along with 40 other people to run a 5k or 10k. I hoped I could win, but didn't have any reason to think I would. The race started. I ran with Tami for a bit. She said, what are you doing? Get going! Try to win! I guess that first 20 seconds was my warmup. So I started chasing people. We climbed, then traversed. A 13 year old kid was leading for the first 3 miles. I kept wondering when he was going to tire. Right around 3.5 I passed him and briefly led the race. Then we had to climb to firebreak road, and then up to the v. I relinquished the lead, and figured I'd sit on this guy and pass him in the end. The descent was wet, so nobody was able to go too fast, me included, but I was hearing new footsteps. Some 27 year old guy was just bombing down the hill. Finally we got to a wider section, and he passed both of us. I gave chase, but to no avail. On the way back to the start, I smashed through every puddle in sight. Why avoid them when you are 100% soaked?
Anyhow, I ended up third. My prize was a scraped WRC water bottle. At free races, you get what you pay for.
I should have pushed up the hills and tried to build a lead there, but I think that kid would have passed me no matter what. I could have won the 5k. Big fish in a little pond, quite literally.
On a separate note, I wore a compression sleeve on my left leg only as an experiment. The result is, my right calf is in knots and I'm limping on that leg, and my left calf is absolutely fine.
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