Xterra puts on a socal trail race series with one race per month and gives out overall awards at the end of the series. They put on a great race including a 5k, 10k, and 15k today. Most people ran the 15k.
The race course was much more challenging than I expected. The first two miles were steep uphill on a fire road. After that we started down hill on a single track trail with switch backs and very low brush that anyone over 5ft tall would have to duck under and this went on for the next 3 miles. I got knocked in the head by branches on multiple occasions and at one point a large branch knocked my hat off and the runner behind me picked it up and gave it to me. I think my hat got dirtier than my shoes. See picture.
There was no room to pass but people were courteous about asking to pull over. A group of three of us packed together with me leading through the dense brush. I was only passed by one runner on this portion. This down hill was so technical that you couldn't make up time from the slow uphill start.Finally, at the 5 mile mark we got off the single track, and we were all happy to start running uphill again as our quads were pretty shot by now. It was a steady uphill climb for the next two miles to the second peak and I ran with Terry Crocker, who I met after the race. Together we maintained a 7:30 pace up the hill until the last quarter mile which really got steep.
We were caught by two or three other runners at the top of the hill and with 2 miles to go I decided to see what I had left in my quads on the downhill (I will probably pay for this tomorrow). I lead the pack that I was running with down the hill to the finish and never looked back. I even caught another runner right before the finish line.
My finishing time was 1:14:05 (just under 8:00 average pace). I was 11th out of at least a hundred or so runners, and about 5th in my age group. The 10th place runner was 2 minutes ahead of me so I had no chance of catching him and making the top 10 (he was 51 years old by the way). My buddy Arnie finished in 1:17 and change and was 18th place. The winner set a course record and broke 1 hour! There was no one close to him. He must have been a short guy.
To put the difficulty of this race into perspective I should be able to run a 15k on level road in under an hour at my threshold pace. This course took me 15 minutes longer.
I knew it would be slow when I hit my 10k in 54:20!
After the race they put on a nice breakfast spread including scrambled eggs, bananas, oranges, muffins, croissants, and coffee. I would recommend an Xterra trail run to anyone looking for a challenging trail run.
I decided to have my Garmin take 1k splits since it was a 15k race. You can really tell how difficult certain parts of the race were when looking at the 1k splits: 5:24, 5:23, 5:32, 4:56, 4:42, 4:59, 6:25, 6:34, 5:12, 5:13, 4:27, 3:38, 4:54, 3:31, 3:15. The Garmin 305 was right on at the finish at 15k or 9.3 miles.
My 5k splits were 25:57, 28:23, and 19:05.
Total elevation ascent was 2470ft.
It was a lot of fun.
See the elevation profile here.
New local races for the rest of the year posted here.
