Recap of Trail Race

I got up early Saturday Morning the 25th, and got ready to head out to Gainesville and the XTERRA trail race.

Got to the race location about an hour before the race start and picked up my race packet and took it back to the car. Got my race number on and decided to do a little warm up. I headed back up where registration took place because I thought the race would start up there.

I should mention that I parked about a half mile from the registration and finish line area.

I ran out on the trail for a short distance, felt tired just as I thought I would and made a decision to run the race as a heart rate run. My plan was to stay as close to 150 bpm as I could for the whole race.

I went back to the registration area to wait around for the race to start and found that the start line was close to where my car was parked. Went and got in the crowd and waited for the start.

The race started on a paved stretch of road and then went into the woods just beyond the registration area. Worked out fairly well, gave the runners time to spread out before hitting the trail. Did have to do some walking when we hit the woods because it was single track, so it did cause a small jam but not to bad.

The pace picked up pretty quickly after we got into the woods. The trail was a mountain bike trail and the mountain bikers had done a very good job of keeping it maintained. I would say it was probably the best trail that I have run on in this race series. We had plenty of uphill and downhill and some flat stretches, we had to cross two streams, but not anything to get your feet very wet. The mountain bikers or someone had built plenty of wooden bridges over other creek crossings.

My heart rate plan worked out pretty well. I did walk a few time mostly on long uphills, but I was able to keep my heart rate in the 150 range. I think I got up to 156 a few times, but when the race was finished my Garmin 305 showed my average heart rate at 150 bpm.

I finished with a chip time of 1:10:03 and placed 1st in my age group. I think with the 100 points for this 1st place finish, even if for some reason I missed the last race of the series, I would still win my age group for the series this year.

We will see.

Just keep moving!