Enter trail running. Often on hikes we will come across people who are out running the same trails we are hiking--as if hiking 10-15 miles isn't enough of a workout. I liked the idea of being able to run these trails but usually going up and down hills is involved--- and I avoid running on hills.
Then I moved to a town that has hills. We live at the top of one of the hills so anywhere I run in town I have to run back up the hill at the end of my run. I decided if I am going to have to run hills it might as well be pretty scenery. The street at the end of our block heads out of town and straight up three big hills. They look intimidating and taunted me the first 3 months we lived here. One day I decided I was going to run that road just so the hills would stop laughing at me. I then discovered the road turns into a gravel road that goes up and down for a few more miles and this has been my favorite training road. It is about 5.5 miles and I don't think more than 100 yards of it is level. So much has changed from high school cross country out in the flatlands of Kansas where we would drive 10 miles to find some sort of an incline to practice on-- and often the school from the next town over would be practicing there too. There weren't enough hills in the county for each school to have their own. Anyway recently on Saturday mornings I have run the hill road and I get to see deer, foxes, some cute calves, and sunrise. It is a challenge but the scenery keeps my mind off of my burning hip flexors. I feel like I have finally conquered my fear of hills.
Since I am not scared of hills now trail running becomes a real possibility. My cousin Elanor and I decided to sign up for the Konquer the Konza 10K. Neither of us have done trail running before. I tried running once out at Konza prairie in college and it ate my lunch. Our first training run we did two miles making sure we went down the "big hill". Each week we went a little bit further and tackled a bit of the trail that was a little more challenging. During the summer we would head out on the weekend early in the morning to get our run in and I think both of us would say it was one of the highlights of our summer. We discovered that if you can actually breathe enough to talk while running it makes the miles fly by. We were able to catch up on life, encourage each other, blow off steam about our weeks, etc. I will admit that we walked too. These were are fun workouts for the week so walking when needed was totally acceptable-- this is a freeing concept to a runner. There is so much guilt that comes with walking while on a run. I remember the first time we ran the complete 6 mile loop. We ran the whole thing and even went up the "big hill". I have always considered it a pretty good day to hike the 6 mile loop so I almost felt like I became a trail runner on that day. When hiking the 6 mile loop the only other crazy people out that far are trail runners-- and now I was one of them.
Sunday morning was finally race day. I will admit that leading up to this race I had only ran about once a week since August. I trained really hard for our triathlon this year and after that I just haven't been real excited about hardcore training so I have only ran when I wanted to. Since it was our first trail race there is no expectation and we are guaranteed a PR (personal record). I also wanted it to be fun and if you push yourself hard to compete well is just isn't fun but fairly painful and miserable. That just doesn't sound appealing to me anymore.
We were standing at the starting line ready for the race and we didn't even bother warming up-- after all when running six and a half miles there is plenty of time to get warmed up. Probably the best part of the day was that the start of the race was delayed since a few of the bison that live at Konza were out on the course and needed to be corralled. We started with 200 other runners jogging down a gravel farm road on as the sun was coming up on a Sunday morning. For some reason it is always fun to run a race with lots of other people-- possibly because misery loves company. Elanor and I were running our way through the crowd and just chatting away.
We did get to see some of the bison safely back in their pasture. I am sure that the bison were more than puzzled by this parade of figures dressed in neon running on these rarely traveled roads. We finally went up the first hill on the course and people started walking. And with trail running that seems to be fairly accepted. Usually trail runs are fairly long distances-- 10-30 miles-- so you generally rest a little bit by walking up the hills. Some how as we were bobbing and weaving through those who were walking as we were still running I got separated from Lindsey. I am sure the gal in a grey shirt I thought was Lindsey was a little confused that I was trying to carry on our conversation. I was a little concerned about being separated because longer races can be tough if you don't have someone to talk to especially in the later miles.
There is a little bit of adventure in trail running since you don't always know the trail in front of you-- where are the hills, how far have I gone, what's around the next bend. Over the next several miles I was entertained trying to catch the person in front of me, and then the next, and the next. I was probably right in the middle of the pack so people weren't too far spread out making this game a lot of fun.
Then we turned the corner to the "big hill". The two gals in front of me hadn't run at Konza before so they were wondering to themselves if we had gone up "the hill everyone had been talking about yet". The hill was at about mile 4. I also knew that once that hill was behind us it was mostly downhill to the finish. One of the problems with trail running is when actually running on a true trail you can't pass anyone which led to a bottleneck going up the hill but we were all in it together. Let me mention here that the volunteers for this race were some of the best. Some one at the top of the hill was ringing a cow bell like there was no tomorrow to encourage each and every runner up to the summit. As a spectator it is hard to have that much enthusiasm sustained over a long period of time. In another part of the course another volunteer let out a loud whoop as each runner trudged by-- yes, by mile 5 everything turned into a trudge.
At this point the excitement of the unknown I mentioned earlier changes. At least in track you know exactly how many meters you have to run and can calculate exactly how long it should take you to finish. With trail running you never are really sure where the finish is... just another 1/2 miles or so, just around the next bend, just over that hill. But finally the finish line came into sight-- such a relief to a runner. I was happy with how I had run and happy that it was over. Elanor finished just a few minutes behind me so we enjoyed a post race walk for our cool down while eating Varsity donuts. We decided that races should just skip giving medals to finishers and just go with donuts. While we had finished the race we hope it isn't the end of our Konza running and maybe there will even be more trail runs in our future.
