Notes
Beverly Park Trail Race. I'm half tempted to mark this as 5 or 4.5 even though it was called a 4 mile race. Kyle and I ended up running a lot harder than we had planned on due to another good runner being there and I can't imagine we ran 8 minute pace. Even with the snow and trails that just seems far too slow.
I've been enjoying the trail races lately and thought a race on single track trails that I know really well would be a lot of fun. After it snowed I saw the race was still going to happen and figured I needed to run today anyway so I would still give the race a try. Kyle decided to join me, and with only 20-30 runners at the start line for the second week in a row I figured we could just have a nice easy run together. I ended up being very wrong. A guy with a corridor running singlet on took off from the start like a bat out of hell. Kyle and I both went with him since we weren't sure how good he was. He beat us to the single track and kept rolling at a solid pace. He crushed in downhill or flat section but during climbs Kyle and I could tell we were stronger (He wasn't bad at them, just weaker than he was on the other sections). On one hill early on Kyle jumped around him and a few minutes late I made my way past him as well (maybe 5 minutes into the race). From here on out Kyle set a solid pace. The other guy really didn't fall off much so Kyle just kept pushing and I stayed right behind him. We continued to take climbs hard and put a little distance on him, but after another 5-10 minutes we had only gained 5-10 seconds on the guy and I could tell this was going to be hard all the way to the end. The climbs were brutal on the quads due to all the slipping, but Kyle just kept rolling so I made sure to stick with him. We both took a few tumbles throughout the race. It was so easy to slide off the edge of the trail (I think each of us went down about 4 times). At the end of the race the guy behind us said he went down about 4 times as well. We never really got a good enough lead to take our foot off the gas but toward the end of the race we knew we would win if we didn't fall apart. At an open section of trail in the prairie I had my worst fall. I slid a long way off the trail and as I got back to up on my feet I went right back down again. Kyle put about 20 meters on me during this fall and as I worked hard to catch up I was lucky not to go down a few more times. Right after I caught back up Kyle had his worst fall. On a steep 4-5 foot drop on the trail Kyle got going a little too fast and at the bottom I watched his feet come out from under him and he went into a superman slide on the snow for about 10 feet. I had to jump off the trail and into the woods to avoid stepping on him. He got up quickly though and continued to roll. Luckily we knew we were about done, and at the end I told him he definitely deserved the win after doing all the work. None of the falls caused any real injury thanks to the snow, and I was really impressed with Kyle's fitness. That race was harder for me than the last two weekends of trail runs. I wish he would have felt better for the Lamb Kohawk meet because I think he could have run really well.
Kyle ended up winning a Ferrels membership for 10 weeks I believe, maybe more. It said it was valued at $350. We also got some cool shirts and lot of homemade sweets.
The race was a ton of fun and I will definitely try to keep it on the schedule in the future. I think the weather turned a lot of people away because this race typically has 100-150 runners, but the snow made it fun in a different way from normal trails. This may have been my first race in snow as well. The only think I would do differently in the future for a trail run with snow would be wear some spikes or yak tracks. The slipping was exhausting!