Wanderer’s Trail Race Recap

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Good morning and Happy Monday! Looks like another rainy day here in Knoxville.

Yesterday was the Wanderer’s Trail Race. A first for me in two ways: (1) first trail race and (2) first race over a 5K (3.1 miles) distance. I was extremely nervous about this race for some reason. Thought about bailing out, but didn’t.

Me in the car before the race

As always, I got us there way too early, which made me even more nervous, but finally the race began. Immediately, as a walker, I was at the back. In less than 0.25 miles, I couldn’t see anyone. My goal for this race was to finish – I had zero idea on how long it would take me.

Up a pavement road for a little and then:

Getting ready to leave the pavement

The first little bit of the off-road was very flat, not very muddy, and kind of nice.

Crossing the Bridge

Once I crossed the bridge, things got muddy. We had a TON of rain in the area on Saturday and trust me, it had not dried at all.

And here comes the mud

This was the beginning of the mud. In a few areas you could avoid the mud by walking on the side, but mostly you just had to go straight through. A couple of times I thought I was losing my shoe.

I will say that I was slightly nervous during the race since there was no one around me. I did have my phone with me just in case. Other than finishing, my goal was to finish uninjured. I could just picture falling and hurting myself with no one around.

Walk the planks

Walking across the stream on the trees was scary. I was really afraid of falling here. Hubby told me later he wondered if I had fallen at that spot. More mud, more walking. I didn’t take too many pictures because I was afraid of dropping the iPhone in the mud. Then I got to here:

The Mud Pond

There was NOOOO way around it, just straight through. While I was contemplating exactly how to go about this, a couple ran up behind me (they had started late). I let them go first so I could judge the depth. Then in I went. COLD water up to my knees. On the plus side, it cleaned off all the mud that was caking up on my shoes. On the minus side, I had really wanted to get a picture of how muddy my shoes were. Oh, well.

From there it was more walking, more hiking, more hills, etc. Then….

FINISHED!

I was dead last, but I finished. And that was my goal. (Not a very flattering picture of me. Oh, well.) I will say that my Garmin only showed 3.65 miles and hubby’s showed 3.95 miles. So, either my Garmin went out on me for a while OR somehow I got off track.

It is entirely possible I was lost for a while, but I tried to follow those little orange flags. I will also say that there were people ahead of me telling the volunteers that they were last (water station was closed by the time I got there) and hubby said he saw people pulling up the little flags well before I finished. So, who knows. Learned also that there had been race volunteers at different stages of the race to help people through the tricky parts. Kind of wish they had waited til the LAST person (ME) got through. BUt you know what – I did it on my OWN!

According to DailyMile, my training for the week looks like:

Jan 16-22, 2012

Surely to goodness I burned more than 170 calories this week. Guessing I have some setting incorrect in DailyMile.

I will also say that I am highly disappointed in my new Tervis Water Bottles . I put some ice and water in them when we left the house. By the time we got to the race (less than a 30 minutes drive), the ice had already melted. In my Tervis Tumblers, I put ice in at 7:30 AM on my way to work and STILL have ice when I go to lunch at 11:30.

Today’s talking point: Have you ever done a trail race? Would you?

Happy Monday!