A Barefoot Trail Race Report:
“Doesn’t It Hurt?”
By Thea Gavin
I wrote the “race report” below the day after the Renegade Racing Summer Trail Series Race at Peters Canyon Regional Park in Orange, CA, on July 12, 2012. I didn’t bring my camera that day, so all I’ve got is a bunch of words to try to show how much fun it was to run, all out, five miles on the trails, barefoot.
Barefoot and juggling umbrella, checkbook, and water bottle, I slippy-stepped my way to the late registration table.
An hour earlier, the weird-for-Orange-County July afternoon overcast had begun to drip, which decided matters for me: perfect trail running conditions.
So I found myself at 5 p.m. on July 12 at the Renegade Racing Summer Trail Run Series, no shoes on, signing up for the 5-mile evening trail race through Peters Canyon Regional Park—famous with local cross country teams who train on its steep ridge-line trails, famous with me for being the place I found a little bit of happiness on horse-back during my angsty teen years. Yeah, those 1970s.
While I might have sacrificed a few brain cells back then, listening to Led Zeppelin and the Doobie Brothers on loopy 8-track tapes, residual derangement wasn’t the reason I’d left my trail running treads at home for this race. Read more here: http://theagavin.wordpress.com/2012...report-to-answer-the-question-doesnt-it-hurt/