Foothills XC12k Race Recap

Race morning I woke up feeling extremely nervous. I hardly get nervous for races anymore let alone an 8 mile race. My stomach was in knots.

             

Maybe it had something to do with this picture…

This was the elevation profile from my Garmin.

This was a small race with 200 participants. The announcer said it was the first time in they reached the max participants so they were very excited.

The start and finish were in the same area. Just a tent with some flags and lines spray painted in the pavement to indicate the start and finish.

You can see the start/finish in the background here…

One of our friends, Danny, said he was also running so we found him and talked till the race started. The day before the race Danny posted on Gene’s Facebook that he would be wearing “the shortest, most disgusting, most revealing shorts possible” for the race so we should prepare ourselves.

He didn’t disappoint…

This was taken after the race

After one last stop at the porta potty we made our way to the starting line. The announcer said he would run with us up to the start of the “Trail of Tears”. Great, when I heard that name I remembered why I was so nervous to begin with.

Going up to the start of the Trail of Tears…

During those first 4 miles my fat cells were definitely crying!

See those tiny little specs at the top of the hills on the picture below… those are people. That’s what I was looking up at and thinking how the hell am I supposed to run up to get to there.

Needless to say there was lots of walking going on during those first 4 miles. Gene was doing awesome. He actually was ahead of me on a lot of those first miles and would stop along the side to wait for me. He told me I didn’t look so happy every time he would smile and turn back to look at me. Not going to lie I was cursing that freaking Trail of Tears. I was running with my hand held and at one point I asked him to carry it. Well more like told him very frustrated that “I NEED you to hold this for a while”. It seriously felt like I was running with a 10 pound weight up that hill!

I was sooooo looking forward to the second half of the race. I just had to hold out for the down hill part and hopefully I could make up some time. Only it wasn’t that easy. The down hill was hard too cause you had to watch your step for fear of flying forward. This would have caused a train wreck cause the trail was single file running only so if someone was coming up fast behind you you moved to the side quickly to let them pass.

The views were beautiful and I definitely tried to use them to distract from the pain of the uphill.

If you zoom in to this photo you can see runners in the center of the photo. Beautiful view but heart breaking to see how far we still had left to go haha.

The second half had one more hill at mile 7 that we walked for a little bit to the final water station. I wanted to make it in under 1:30. I told Gene this and sped up a little as we were nearing the bend to the finish area. I wanted to cross the finish line together for our first race and we did! We crossed together in 1:28:36 (official time) for 7.96 miles official course distance (but my Garmin said 8 miles.)

It may not look like I am sweating but I promise I did! My friends already gave me a hard time saying I wasn’t even sweating and this was a piece of cake for me. Believe me it was not! I just know how to look good for pics haha.

Dirty legs!

It was so much fun to be able to run together and encourage each other along the way. Gene was doing so awesome on the up hills I think he is a faster and stronger runner than he lets on. He likes to use the excuse that he is old and hasn’t run in years, well now I now better! This 8 mile run was a few seconds faster than the run we did a few weeks ago on the greenbelt! Have I told you guys he ran the Honolulu Marathon in 1998 with no training? Yea, all cause his friend asked him the night before if he wanted to run it with him and he said ok. With no “official” marathon training. Just the running he did every morning during PT in the Army. So he definitely has some speed and endurance him.

 

At the end they were doing a random drawing for prizes and then just started throwing out water bottles. I got an awesome Camelbak water bottle with some socks in it.

Here’s our official race photos. Beautiful view of Boise in the background.

Notice the look on my face. I was carefully watching my step. I almost fell a few times and I was worried I twisted my ankle. It hurt a little when I got home so I iced it later that evening. But it was fine the next day thankfully.

Overall this was a great race, well marked course and I will be running it again next year. Pain and all! I have a time to beat now. And this time I’ll do a few practice runs up the Trail of Tears!