Believe and Achieve 10k trail race report

This was my first 10k trail race this year. My real love of running comes from running trails. So I was really pumped up for this race. The day before my race Kirsten and I ran some of the course just to check it out and get in some Akron half marathon training milage. We ran a lot of the normal loop and some of the buckeye trail. Nothing to crazy but enough to get ya a little muddy.

The morning of the race it started to rain about 3:00 am, when I woke up I knew it was going to be a fun run. When I got to the race everyone was hanging out under the pavilion talking about the course and how the small water crossing were now small raging rivers. Even talk of a muddiest runner contest. Before the race started I decided to ditch the rain gear and just embrace the wet mud fest that was about to begin.

I am a mid pack runner, I know I will never run up front with the sicko crazy fast guys and gals. Today tho I lined up front, I think I was 5-6 in line. I wanted to see what it was like, even for the first .1 mile. When the horn went off two of the guys just laid down the hammer, I mean they were gone as gone could get. The start was on crushed gravel trails and was a slight down hill, so its was a easy fast start. Only a few runners passed me by. When we hit around .5 miles in we turned left and headed into the woods for some single person trails. This is my favorite part of trial running! Even thou the trails were a muddy slippery mess I was still holding good ground and even past some of the guys that took me in the start. When we cam up to the first water crossing some guys were a little hesitant about charging in, some were even standing in the water that was now over knee height. I was following a faster guy that manned up and jumped right into it and continued to run it hard. I could not just walk thou it after that so I hit it to, that was a great feeling to hammer threw that. I continued threw some really nice trails and climbed up a nice muddy rocky hill and headed back on the crushed rock trails. On the open paths you can tell who was the road runners, thats were they took off, but when we hit the hills they fell back. Half way was a killer up hill with a water stop at the top. Grabbed a quick drink and hit it again. The trail took us back the was we came from for a little then headed of to some nice single person trails again. The only complaint about the race was towards the end it wasn't marked out that well. I was running solo for a while and wasn't sure I was even going the right way. 400 yards from the finish I saw a runner walking back into the corse and I yelled out to him to make sure I was going the right direction. When I popped out to the woods I hit it hard again when I saw the timing lights. I am not sure on the official time yet, my Garmin was at 53:27. That would be a 9:14 pace. I am fine with that for a trail race!