Run On The Wildside 9K Trail Run

I was up bright and early this morning to take on the Run on the Wildside 9K Trail Run. I was super nervous about this run because it was my first race >5K. I didn't know how 'serious' it would be. I was kind of afraid they'd be like, "oh we went ahead and took down the finish line because you were so slow." Yep, I was scared.

On Thursday I thought I had convinced my running buddy to join me, but she changed her mind (for good reason, she's coming back from an injury and would have just been doing it to support me). Then I thought B-rad and the brown dog were gonna come cheer me on. But they slept in. So I did it by my big bad self.

I also had trouble choosing an outfit (noticing a trend are we?). This is what I laid out last night:

Overkill much? What's funny is that I cut out the three pairs of socks that I couldn't decide between either. I have issues. So I chose the blue shirt on the far right if you're wondering. I wore my new hat that I picked up last week at FootRx. Here's a pic of it on before I went running on Thursday:

I pretty much love it (more than I love my scraggly pony and awkward self portrait). I was very skeptical of the white because I sweat like a fat kid a lot. I'll keep you updated on that front. But otherwise it's a great hat. It's light and soaks up all my sweat. I also really like the fit. Thanks Mizuno.

So anyways, let's get down to the race. The race was at the NC Arboretum, like the Biltmore Classic. However, for this race we had to park at our church, Biltmore Baptist and ride a shuttle over to the arboretum. Made sense in theory I guess.

I arrived at Biltmore around 7am and went to the registration desk. Keep in mind that I pre-registered for this race. Two ladies in front of me were filling out their registration forms, then the guy asked what size shirts they wanted. They said medium and he said congrats you got the last ones. I wasn't thinking much of it because I pre-registered and I could see packets already made. I stepped up, gave him my name and he asked me what size t-shirt I wanted. It took everything in me not to say, well see here on my bib where I selected a size when I registered... MEDIUM. Oh well. I smiled and asked for a large. I'm not passive aggressive at all.

After sulking back to my car with my new redneck lingerie sleep shirt I joined the line for the shuttle. It was about 715am at this point. And we waited... And waited. Finally a bus shows up around 730am (the first time I've seen it since being on the property for 30 minutes). It couldn't hold us all. So we waited some more. I was on the next group that boarded the bus at 755am. The race was scheduled to start at 8am. I hadn't stretched or warmed up. And you know I needed to pee. Lucky for me, there were still about 30 people who couldn't fit. So I knew I'd have time to get it all done. As I get off the bus a man makes an announcement that there was one more load of runners and that the race should start around 830am (yeah right). He also said something to the effect of, "thank you all for being on time, those others should know better." That kinda irritated me. It kinda irritated a lot of people from what I gathered. Anyways.

I felt bad for the last group, they literally got off the bus and five minutes later the race was starting. Not ideal for them I'm sure. The race itself was great. Beautiful course. Good mix of uphill/downhill. Almost all trails inside the forest. Three water stations. The miles were marked with these:

I want one so bad. But here's the weird thing, when I saw the first one, my Nike+ said 0.80 miles. Then from that point on the jeep were consistently 1 mile apart according to Nike+. (And yes, Nike+ is known to give me mixed data sometimes alot.). So I'm questioning the length of the course now.

There was a lot of good post race food:  water, bananas, Roly Poly wraps and fro-yo, Chick-Fil-A sandwiches (reason number 23947802 that B-rad should have gotten outta bed), and juices. After the race I started walking. I was ready to get home, bus or no bus. Luckily I timed it well and I got to ride the bus back to the church and get home in a reasonable amount of time.

We got a lot of great stuff for running:

I really like the shirts. We got these right after crossing the finish line: 

So even though I didn't like the whole shirt/shuttle situation, I still really enjoyed the race itself. All the proceeds went to MADD.

Goal number one was to not finish last. I wasn't.
Goal number two was to finish in under an hour. And I did! Barely, but I did. I'll post times and stuff whenever it goes up.

I walked a lot, but tried to limit it to the hills. I made up a lot of ground during the downhills and held steady during the flats. I definitely need to work on my endurance and continue to add mileage. I've been so obsessed with trails the last two weeks that all my workouts have been about them (gaining the ability to run hills, not adding mileage). I've not run in my street shoes in two weeks.

My plan is yoga in the AM then hopefully a flat two or three miler after work.

Did you race this weekend?
How did it go? What do you need to improve on?