Sehgahunda Trail Marathon or There’s Mud in the Streets, It’s
Up to My Ankles
Summary: Finish time
5:11:30 (pace 11:51)
Place: 17 out of 114 (13th
male out of 85)
Elevation gain: 2400 feet
I survived but good god it was brutal. The course is a point to point along a technical
hiking trail that runs at the bottom of a gorge but there are 8 checkpoints
situation on the road that runs the top of the gorge. To get to these checkpoints you need to run
up a gas pipeline access road that is waist high grass. This is all good when it’s dry but this May
we’ve had 2x the normal rain. This meant
that the trail itself was at least ankle deep mud about 50% of the time and the
access roads were shin deep standing water/mud along with the grass. Combine this with 2400feet gain and 112
stream crossings and brutal is an understatement. So brutal that they relaxed the 8 hour
cut-off time (assessed at each checkpoint) to allow more people to continue. Not me but shows the mud! (pictures courtesy of Tom Taylor Jr and more can be seen at facebook.)
 
I get to the finish and get my
packet and drive off to the start to get ready and we are off a little after
8. The send off the women 15 minutes
before the men and the relay 15 minutes after.
We are moving along nice and start to catch a few of the women. I figure I’m in about 7th place
which is super amazing and I set up behind a guy and stay with him. I was covered in mud about 2 miles in, there
was no avoiding it. The first checkpoint
was hell and impossible to run it. Soul
sucking was a good description. Ate
some watermelon and continued on. Same
process with the route to aid station 2 and 3.
Aid station 3 was at about mile 15.5 and it was then I started to
blow-up. After that point it was pretty
much just get through it. It takes a
little while but some of the men start to catch me and I try to stay with
them. Miles 16-22 involved lots of
cursing and walking and frustration. Finally after about mile 22 I start to feel a
little better and run more and finally the trail picks up an old carriage road
and follows this to the finish, NO more mud and I can pick up the pace to the
finish. I see the finish, power up the
little hill and run it in (the song playing was Boomtowns Rats’ “I don’t like Mondays”,
a song about a school shooting!) I
stumble around and walk it out. Celebrated
with a delicious beer, ate some lunch
and packed it home. 
The ok: I wanted sub 5 but given the
conditions I’ll accept my time. The average finish time was 25 min slower this
year and last year was their inaugural race with a much weaker field that was ½
the size.
The Good: The experience was great, it was a totally
crazy this to do. The aid station volunteers
were super sweet and cheered like crazy when they saw one of us coming. Plus they kept me full of flat pepsi and red
bull which was probably the only thing that kept me going. My training prepared me the best it could
have. The elevation/hill were hard but
nothing I was not prepared for. The guy
that beat me by 30seconds ran a 1:32:xx ½
marathon last month and I figure that I’m in that type of shape right now so I
guess I finished where I was supposed to.
The Bad: The mud was absolutely soul sucking. If it was dry, it would be a completely
different race and much more enjoyable.
I would NOT to do it again if conditions were like they were last
weekend. I also rolled my ankle towards
the end of the race and pulled something in my foot. I didn’t realize it until after the race when
my realized I was gimping around. I
spent Sunday and Monday limping but it’s on the upswing now and should be better
soon. 
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