A beautiful day for a run with sunshine and about 55F to start, and it warmed up to about 60F.
The course was about 85% through the woods on trails that ranged from rocks to roots to muck. It had lots of grade change and some long hills, but none were as steep as some I've encountered in other trail races. It was a well run event put on by Pretzel City, and the course was pretty easy to follow. At least the people I followed had no trouble staying on the trail.
I would rate this run as barefoot NOT friendly. I know that some folks are much better BFR than I am, but I can hardly imagine anyone navigating these rocks, fist to breadbox sized, on these grades and having the whole thing covered by a solid layer of recently fallen leaves, without doing themselves a serious injury. I ended up with some bruises on my feet even in VFF Bikilas. Funny thing was that a couple people commented that I must be really hardcore to run in the VFFs. Also, I think my trail running skills are improving, as I positively loved "spinning" down the hills, passing people. Certainly that's become my favorite part of trail running. I sort of resented one woman I passed going down hill who just ate me up on the flat section at the end of the race. Grrr!
The most amazing thing to me was how fast the field of runners was. The winners, like the top 10, were under 1:05! Yikes! I can't run a mile on the flat as fast as these guys ran up and down the hills. For the rest, of 387 finishers I came in 178th with a 1:40:30 or so. (It wasn't chip timed and I took my time getting to the start after the gun.) That works out to 10:45 m/m, which I was pretty pleased with, being 10 minutes faster than my first and only other 15K.
The highlight of the results listing to me was the "1st Woman 65+" who ran the race in 2:04 at 73 years old! Damn!
The course was about 85% through the woods on trails that ranged from rocks to roots to muck. It had lots of grade change and some long hills, but none were as steep as some I've encountered in other trail races. It was a well run event put on by Pretzel City, and the course was pretty easy to follow. At least the people I followed had no trouble staying on the trail.
I would rate this run as barefoot NOT friendly. I know that some folks are much better BFR than I am, but I can hardly imagine anyone navigating these rocks, fist to breadbox sized, on these grades and having the whole thing covered by a solid layer of recently fallen leaves, without doing themselves a serious injury. I ended up with some bruises on my feet even in VFF Bikilas. Funny thing was that a couple people commented that I must be really hardcore to run in the VFFs. Also, I think my trail running skills are improving, as I positively loved "spinning" down the hills, passing people. Certainly that's become my favorite part of trail running. I sort of resented one woman I passed going down hill who just ate me up on the flat section at the end of the race. Grrr!
The most amazing thing to me was how fast the field of runners was. The winners, like the top 10, were under 1:05! Yikes! I can't run a mile on the flat as fast as these guys ran up and down the hills. For the rest, of 387 finishers I came in 178th with a 1:40:30 or so. (It wasn't chip timed and I took my time getting to the start after the gun.) That works out to 10:45 m/m, which I was pretty pleased with, being 10 minutes faster than my first and only other 15K.
The highlight of the results listing to me was the "1st Woman 65+" who ran the race in 2:04 at 73 years old! Damn!
