Race Report – Little River 10 Mile Trail Run

This training race kind of snuck up on me.  Before I knew it, I had to get up early and go push myself for 10 miles on snowy singletrack.  Uh oh.

I mean it when I say training race.  It’s the kind of event that helps me prepare for another event but for which I don’t necessarily feel prepared to do.  In other words, this was speed work for Uwharrie.

I have to thank John and David for sticking behind me for almost the entire race to keep me going.  Without the sounds of their breathing, footfalls and occasional “you’re doing great Alicia’s”, I would have surely gone slower.  I know they could have dropped me at will much earlier in the event, but they hung with me until I made that fateful wrong turn. 

It was a hard run on zig-zaggy mountain bike trails with plenty of ice and snow to add to the technical difficulty.  The thing is, I do OK on technical single track running when I’m going slow.  But tearing through the woods at what felt like 7 min mile effort (but was really 8 min miles) is no easy feat with the winter sun glinting in my eyes obscuring all the 100′s of times the trail folded back on itself up and down gullies and gulches. 

Somehow I managed a 3rd female finish a solid 4 minutes behind the top two.  As a reward, I won a technical shirt for Gary (they were out of my size) and another Nathan fuel belt just like the kind I will be using at Uwharrie. Daren got all geeked out because now he can pre-fill my fuel belts and just trade off belts instead of switching bottles and stuffing more food into the pockets.  I’m not sure what difference that will make, but we now have the option.

Anyway, it was a fun day.  What’s not to like about going running in the woods with several hundred of my friends.

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