Birkie Trail and Trek - Half Marathon

(OK well Blogger is making me upset by not allowing me to put text along sides of pictures so I've officially wasted enough time and have given up so it looks like all will be centered in my world tonight!)

It was an early rise to drive up to Cable, WI for the American Birkebeiner Trail Marathon and Half Marathon.  Luckily we didn't need to be parked and through pick-up until 9:45am but it was still a 4:30am wake up call and 5:45 out the door.  We picked up Mark's buddy Steve as well.  He came up to run the half.  His first ever half marathon race AND his first race as a Master (just turned 40 last week).

The drive up was relatively uneventful and actually went pretty fast.   Lots of color in the sunrise.  Sailors take warning!!

 

Our starting spot was actually the half of the full marathon so we got to see a few people run through.  As you can see the weather was beautiful!  We were realy happy and excited to start.

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Steve wasn't quite as impressed to take a startline photo ;)

 

The trail was all on a wide, grass-covered path through the woods.  It's a large, well-known ski trail in the winter.  The first half was filled with difficult climbs.   I tried to continue to power up them as much as I could as long as my body would let me recover before the next one.  It felt great to pass people going up hills :)

I knew there was a "high point" coming somewhere in the middle.   It was climb after climb until the sky opened up and we reached the top of the tree line.  With the colors in full bloom, it was gorgeous!!  (got me the great new header picture for my blog)  Mark got a great shot of me going up one of the final hills towards the top.

Of course there was a "highest point" sign on the course and another runner lady was nice enough to stop and help us take a picture.  Deja vu to my highest point picture at Great River Ragnar Relay

From that point on the crowd really thinned out and we had a lot of the trail to ourselves.  It was FANTABULOUS!  Exactly what I want when I run on the trails.  I want just me (or us in this case), no crazy crowd and the crunching leaves under my feet.  Here's a great pic of Mark flying up a hill.

Trail running is a lot tougher than road running but the benefits in the beauty of the course are worth the extra effort.   I guess this would be another PR since it's a first.  

Trail Half Marathon PR - 2:03:28

I would come back and run this race again in a heartbeat.  Only change is that we would like to stick around for another day or two to explore, geocaching and check out the mountain biking trails!

Oh.....and this is my official goodbye....to my blue Asics.  I decided that this would be their last race before they retire.  I have trail shoes but they aren't great for distance races so, knowing the trails would be a little wet and mucky, I wore my Asics as their final race run.

BEFORE THE RACE

AFTER THE RACE.  DIRTY, WET AND DONE!

To my Gel-Kayanos....it's been fun, you've served me well this year in training and racing.  Not one bad incident with shin splints.   Thank you for all the miles, it's now time for you to retire to become my comfort shoes :)

Mileage is getting high for our LV Marathon training.  This weekend will be our first run past the half marathon distance.  Last weekend was supposed to be 14 but we decided a trail run 13 was close enough.   This coming weekend will be 16 so now is when things start to get fun.  

So far all is going well and our running bodies are holding up well.   We are going to get our new training shoes tomorrow night that will carry us through the marathon.  Unfortunately we've both been battling head colds the past couple days so that's held our training runs up a bit.

I'm still doing my best to stick to my diet plan and while I've had some major slips days, all in all I've lost another 3 pounds since I've started back on another 3 month plan to get me to the wedding.  Since our first weight loss plan back at the beginning of the year, I'm down a total of 11.5 pounds and I'm feeling so much better because of it!

Next race: Monster Dash Half Marathon