Paleozoic 25K & future races

Things have been crazy around these parts lately! I wasn't home at all last week, so I apologize for the lack of updates. Anyways, yesterday was a fun but exhausting day. I ran my first trail run!! I have been training on the trail for over a year, but have never done a trail run. It was an intense experience.FOR.SURE! It was rainy/snowy a lot this week, so I knew the conditions of the trail would be rough, actually the official website for the race said that it would be "challening" after going over the route Friday night. It was EXTREMELY muddy, I even heard my friend running at one point b/c the mud was so thick!! It was also snowy/icy at some parts & there was even standing water here & there too. Our feet were definitely wet & muddy! These are my feet, they were muddy THROUGH my socks & shoes. GROSS!

The best part of trail runs are the aid stations. We went through 3 and folks, there is CANDY at the aid stations!! At some longer runs they even have pop along with the standard gatoraid & water. I definitely took the M&Ms & gummy hearts at each aid station LOL If you can't eat candy when you're running, when CAN you eat candy?! 

This was the inaugural race, so there were some kinks to iron out. One of the most glaring is that the trail was not properly marked all along the way. At one point my friend & I came to a fork in the trail, we were about to turn left, when a whole group of people came from that way saying they were 60% sure we needed to be going the other way! lol So we followed the group, not even knowing if they were right or not, but the chance seemed to be in our favor ;) My friend & I ended up cutting of 2 miles from our run though. There was a "back" 5 miles that we were supposed to run, and at another fork in the trail we started going left when we saw flags to the right. We had been told the trail would be marked with orange flags, which we saw to the right, so we ended up going right instead of left & cut off a couple miles from the run!! But we are proud of our awesome run & good finish :)

I have to say, now that it's over, I'm sad we lost those miles, but at the time, I was totally fine not doing them LOL It was a hard race, the trail was yucky & muddy, it was cold & there were a lot more hills than I was used to. When we ended up shorter than we were supposed to, I was OK with being done lol I definitely had a good experience though & I could see a trail run being really nice in the fall, when the weather is a little better. I was delighted by the aid stations & I LOVED the small atmosphere of the race along with the friendly people. I made a few friends standing in line for the porta potty LOL It was really cool & I'm glad that I did it!! I'll have to do a few more trail runs this year for sure.

Next up, I am going down to Kentucky for a half-marathon. I am planning on going down with my sister & staying our older sister. I am excited for the race b/c part of it on the Kentucky Derby race track! SO fun, right?! Then I found a marathon in May that I still need to register for & I have another half-marathon coming up in June. I'm excited to be busy & keep up running and working out. I always need a reason to keep doing it, so I like to register for as many races as possible :)