Redemption

New Year, brings a new start. No resolutions this time around. No official goals that I'll speak of. I'm going to let the title of this blog entry define what this year is going to be about though. Redemption! Two years ago, this disaster happened. I think you can see where this is going.

Luckily, there have been far fewer bad runs than good ones. Probably one of the only reasons to keep going, but those bad ones tend to stick in the memory banks. This one specifically, I remember how badly I wanted to quit, yet was in the middle of the damn woods with only one way out. That's probably the only reason that prevented me from quitting. It's a bad race when texting in the middle of it, and that's what I remember most from it.

Even though this is labeled redemption, I can't honestly say that I trained hard ensuring I'd do better. My lack of training prompted signing up for this race again. Since I needed a crazy month of running to pull off the prior entry (The 1600), figured it only made sense to sign up for something and this is one race that pained me to think about, hell it pained me physically for a solid month, but ultimately tormented me every time I see my time.

Prior to the start, get the typical looks for wearing shorts. A new one this time, a woman came up to tell me "I wanted to wear shorts, but my husband wouldn't let me". My response, "Ha, same for my wife, but in my case what she doesn't know, won't hurt her". Gave her something to think about for the rest of her race.

The gun sounded and people absolutely bolted, guess they have redemption on their minds as well. It was slippery as hell in the early parts. Even with trial shoes, it was icy enough in the early parking lot phase to prevent me from bolting and had me playing it careful. Once on the trail, it became obvious this wasn't going to be a cakewalk. While a good nine inches of less snow than last time, the trail was hardly clear. Instead what I thought would be a little bit of snow, turned out to be ruts of ice from the bikes and other foot traffic. A 25K with nothing but ankle busters, here we go.

The first couple miles, tried to stay very relaxed. The problems with trails, it's so damn hard to pass people. Always find myself content to stay with people provided nobody is pulling away, which is dumb because it's not it's possible to see more than a few people ahead. About four miles in, started passing a few before breaking away and catching the next clump of about six people.

In the back of my mind, there was certainly some fear as to what kind of shape I'd be at in the later miles, kept telling myself not to waste much energy here and save it for later if possible. This group did seem to going at a decent pace, well until about mile six and the first two broke away.

When the real hills of the course started, the original two who broke away were hell and gone. I was tailing two more who I assumed were a couple. The others had fallen back and were gone from what I could tell. Going uphill is never fun, but at least the footing felt more secure. On the downhill, caution took over and I eased back. It really felt like an accident waiting to happen. It pained me to see the couple pull ahead and out of eye sight, but at least I wasn't walking or texting either.

With about two or three miles to go the trail switched from the normal bike trail to a less used section of trail and it made a big difference. Gone were the ruts and it was much more like I had expected being a softer, better footing. What the? There's the woman half of what I thought was a couple running alone. Dammit! Clearly not a couple or he's going to hear about leaving her after for sure. Either way, I feel less guilty passing now. The question now is, do I have enough time to catch the guy in front of her? Turns out I didn't, damn close though. Had him insight for about the last half mile and had there been another quarter mile, would have had him.

In the end, it didn't matter. Didn't place and catching him wouldn't have changed that, but did cut thirty seven minutes off my previous time, and that is redemption! Hoping this theme continues.