I wore the water shoes and
I wore the water shoes and the run was great.
There was some very rocky terrain and a lot of sticks on the trail. I would have appreciated the challenge, since I haven't run on that sort of ground very much, but the water shoes worked out well.
There was also a number of small fallen logs on the trail. Is this common for trail runs? I kind of enjoyed it - while everyone else took big leaps over the logs, I stepped lightly on almost every one.
There were a lot of steep ups and downs. At the bottom of one descent, there was a big deep puddle and everyone was running around it. I went right through the middle and headed up the muddy slope on the other side. That was probably the point where I most wished I were barefoot- the water shoes didn't have very good traction. But I got my footing again and headed up the hill. Someone behind me exclaimed,
"Water shoes!"
"Yep," I answered.
"That's gotta be uncomfortable." Where people come up with these notions, I'll never know.
"It's awesome! But they wouldn't let me go barefoot."
"I bet you're glad you didn't now," she answered.
"I coulda done it."
On the uphills, I passed a few people - some walking, some huffing along. But on the downhills, I took a suicide plunge and blew everyone away. I was probably a little more careless than I should have been - at least once I was stumbling and slipping on bumpy, rocky ground, but the feeling was incredible.
A lot of people passed me on level ground or on slight downhill slopes, but I was surprised how many of them were people I thought were already ahead of me. I finished 41 out of 123 in my age group with a 10K time of 1:08:21.