Looking ahead: Summer of Trail

Been a while since I had any big races on the calendar, so here's how the summer event season is shaping up... 

6/8 - Cottonmouth Beerlay 8-mile (this is a fun one... 4x2 laps, 1 beer per lap)

7/13 - Carolina Reaper 50k (solo version... same course/format as Snowbird)

7/27 - Tushars Mountain Half Marathon 

8/3 - Park City Trail Half Marathon

9/7-9/8 - Blue Ridge Relay

9/14 - Jones Gap Trail Half Marathon

Basically lots of long, slow, off-road stuff!

Two of the races are in Utah and are scheduled around our planned family vacation in Salt Lake City & Park City, Utah at the end of July. I'm most nervous about the Tushars Mountain half, because it starts above 10,000 ft altitude, climbs to a peak above 12,000 ft, and the elevation gain of the half marathon is about 4,000ft of climbing! 😱 That one is going to be a doozy. I'm not anticipating any kind of speed, just doing it for the challenge and the experience!

So yeah, going to be a summer of trail and elevation for me. 🌄

Kicked off the training with a long run (little over 11 miles) at Paris Mountain on Sunday (yesterday) afternoon. I had a route in mind and knew the approximate distance but didn't really worry about it... was quite freeing to just take off on a run and not really know the exact time or distance. Just ran what I felt like running, walked when I needed to, stopped for breaks and lots of pretty photos. Felt great, although the legs felt the 5k race effort from the day before and the calves took a while to loosen up.

New trail shoes!

Only 1,400 feet of climbing though... gonna  have to find some bigger hills around here somewhere. 😁

Race Report: ZF Get In Gear 5k

This past Saturday was the 3rd race (of 8) in the Corporate Shield series, the ZF (pronounced "Zed Eff" like a proper European) Get In Gear 5k, hosted by ZF Transmissions in Gray Court, SC. This is the newest race in the Corporate Shield series, and only my second time running it (last year was the first). 

I volunteered to help with race setup, so got there quite early (6:15am). It was actually chilly (mid-50s) while setting up before the sun was up! After getting the tables and tents and post-race food/water set up, I was able to get in about a mile of a warm-up jog around the parking lot. This helped with feeling chilly so I could shed my sleeves before the race. 

Pre-race team pic!

We had a small group signed up for the Milliken team this year, but 8 of the 10 registrants showed up and showed out with strong performances all around!

This lollipop course is sneaky... the first mile is basically flat/slightly downhill straightaway, then at mile 1 you turn, find some small hills, go to gravel, then off-road into grass, over curbs in a parking lot, back through grass/trail, and pop back onto a road with a little climb back to the initial straightaway for the third mile but you realize it's slightly uphill for just about all but the last 10th of a mile to the finish. It feels like forever!

Splits reflect perception

Finish time was solidly under 22 mins, which I was really surprised/pleased with!

22nd of 271 finishers
3rd overall female (of 105)

Managed to snag 1st female team with the corporate shield points as well - woohoo!

Ville-to-Ville Relay

The triumphant return to the Ville-to-Ville Relay occurred last weekend (4/13) as I participated for my 6th year running this event. I've participated every year since the inaugural event in 2018, including pandemically-altered event years, except for 2023 when I had this little conflicting race. This year I was excited to rejoin Team Quest in Peace (formerly the Quest Brewing team until they closed a couple of years ago). The team members have changed over the years, but a solid 3-4 of us have been at each one and we were excited to all be back together running again.

Event Basics:

Similar to other relays, this one is shorter (74 miles total) and involves 12 legs run by teams of up to 6 people (so everyone runs twice). The race starts in Asheville and runs to Greenville.

Less exciting for this year was our assigned start time of 5:00 a.m. which I'm pretty sure is the earliest we have ever started. We always drive up the morning of the event, so this meant meeting for a 3:15 a.m. departure to drive in Dave's minivan up to Asheville. We met up with no issues, piled into the van, chatted and napped on the drive up, and arrived with sufficient but not overly excessive time at the start. 

Me, Isabel, Meg, Abbi, Dave, Alaina

First Run: Leg #1 - Recreation Pool Park to AC Reynolds Middle School - 5.14 Miles - Rating = Hard

Starting out in the early morning darkness was one thing, but since it was the start of the race there were plenty of others nearby so I wasn't worried about getting lost. I had the RaceJoy app navigating in my pocket and the trails were well-marked. After a brief mile on the road, we dipped onto the Mountains to Sea trail for a couple of miles. This was tons of fun - off-road running in the darkness, just trucking along through the woods. Really great! After we exited the trail, there were some hilly roads through residential areas on our way to the exchange zone at the school. 

Overall was 5.19 mi @ 8:52/mi average, which varied widely from the 10:30-ish pace on the trail stairs to 7:30-ish pace on the roads. 

After that, my favorite part of the day was a few legs later...

Beer and breakfast burrito 😍

The morning was full of running into other teams that I knew, chatting and enjoying the beautiful sunshine, and making our way across the state line. My next leg was the final run in North Carolina, running from Tuxedo Park up to Talisman Camp on the NC/SC border. 

Second Run: Leg #7 - 3.53 miles

This run was a straight shot on a single road, mostly uphill (gaining ~100ft/mile, total 370ft). Managed to maintain an 8:00/mi pace which I was pretty happy about considering it was also getting warm. Not much interesting about this one, just a steady climb and knowing I was going to be done for the day once it was finished!

Got this one done then had time to hang out at Hotel Domestique in the sunshine while we waited for our runner to come through. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent soaking up sun (probably too much) and enjoying beers and chatting with other race participants as we went from exchange to exchange. 

We finished a little after 4pm and all ran as a team the final 50 feet to the finish line. So much fun to run with this team for yet another year!

Running to the finish line

Team!

The O.G. ladies (or at least have run 3+ years together)

And yes, we're already signed up for next year! 

Welp, that got away from me. Whoopsie.

OK, so since mid-January it's been quite a busy month and a half few months. I had 4 straight weekends of events which really took a lot of energy. I loveeeee doing events and races but consecutive weekends definitely takes a lot. Then it was followed by... I don't even know, life??

Below is a list of the events from the past many several weeks and links to their blog posts that I've finally caught up on...

Saturday Jan. 20th - GTC Run Downtown 5k

Saturday Jan. 27th - Snowbird Challenge 50k

Friday-Sunday Feb. 2-4 - GORUCK Savannah Weekend

Saturday Feb. 10 - GTC Green Valley 10-Miler

Saturday Mar. 9th - Earth Run 5k

I'll start fresh with next week's blog and might go back and enter a few others from interesting things but gotta do something!

Race Report: Milliken Earth Run 5k

Back for my second year as Race Director for the Milliken Earth Run 5k and boy was it an interesting one. First off, I was out of town for work until Friday evening (the night before the race). Thankfully my volunteer crew is AMAZING and had everything totally organized. Secondly, there were threats of severe weather all night and into the next morning, so I was obsessively checking weather forecasts and making the decision on whether to cancel the event or not.

Thankfully, by the next morning, the rain was predicted to ease off by race start time, so we went ahead with it.

The race course was an absolute MUD FEST but man it made for a memorable time splashing through enormous puddles! I don't even remember most of the event, just trying not to lose my footing and completely face plant in the mud. Also made for not as fast times as usual, but here's the kicker... I was ONE SECOND from being first place female, and I had no idea!

Results

The timing guy (who knew me/knows I'm the race director) even asked me if I intentionally held back so I wouldn't "win my own race" (his words) but I said heck no, if I had known, I would have pushed to win!

Of course I got zero photos from the event because nothing was dry... but man, what a day!

Race Report: Green Valley 10-Miler

This race has consistently been one of my favorites in Greenville... it's always a challenging course through hilly neighborhoods close to home. It's not a huge race either, just a few hundred participants, which makes it feel more like a small hometown race than one of these giant ones with thousands of runners. 

I did a little jog to warm up before the race but didn't do much preparation, and wasn't sure what to expect results-wise. At last year's race, I had been consistently running Altamont almost weekly, so I felt well-prepared for the hills. This year I think the last time I ran Altamont was on a rainy night in early December, and before that it had been months. Obviously I'm still running and training regularly but hadn't done much specifically for this race or for speed. 

So, once the gun went off I set out and decided to just run what felt right... push if it felt good, ease off if it didn't. Of course that's relative because running hard uphill doesn't ever feel "good" but... well, you know what I mean (maybe). 

The first mile was the fastest (7:03) and it was net downhill, so that makes sense. After that I settled into a mid-to-upper 7s pace for the remainder of the race, with just one mile squeaking above 8 minutes (mile 8 @ 8:09) although the final mile was close (7:59). 

Final time was 1:16:46, only 5 seconds slower than last year! Pretty amazing year-to-year consistency in my opinion. :)

Post-race crew awaiting awards

First place age group! 🎉

GORUCK Savannah Weekend

Shifted focus to this event back in November when we started to get a little nervous about the Charleston Tough event and whether it was going to happen (turns out it did, but details were minimal and I think we made the right choice). 

In the week or so leading up to the weekend in Savannah, we noticed several changes in the dates/times of the events. Even the Friday afternoon of the event weekend, the time for the Sunday Basic kept shifting. Thankfully all got sorted out and we were able to do all 4 events as planned.

Here's how it went...

Worked from home on Friday and left midday to get down to Savannah mid afternoon. Checked into the really cool hotel (dinosaurs! geodes! old power plant!) and then met up with John for early dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Event 1: GORUCK Light

10# plate in ruck + supplies

3-4 hours

Starting at 1900 hours

John and I packed up our gear and decided the ~mile walk to Forsyth park where the event was being held wasn't too bad, so we rucked our way to the start. It was already dark as we walked, so we had our headlamps handy and arrived at the starting area (which was on the far side of the park from the direction we were going) in plenty of time. We decided at that point we would not be rucking back to the hotel afterwards. 

We stood around as participants (called "GRTs" in the GORUCK community) gathered. Ended up being about 25 of us altogether. At the prescribed hour, Cadre Barbarossa (our leader for the event) had us stand in formation, inspect our gear, and then spread out for some stretching/yoga to start things off. After going over the logistics and expectations, we headed over to Cadre's car to collect the coupons (i.e. the items of varying weight that we would, as a team, carry around throughout the event). Coupons ranged from 25# sandbag kettlebell to a 120# sandbag to several cases of water bottles as well as an American flag that went with us everywhere. 

I won't go into all the details since some of the mystery around GORUCK challenges is what makes them fun/unique. But suffice it to say we rucked in loops around the park carrying coupons as a team, trading off as needed, and stopping as a team to do challenges (both physical and trivia-based). We had enough breaks to make it manageable, but by the 2200 timestamp when we finished, we were excited for the patches and beverages to be handed out.

the LIGHT team

One patch, one beer. 

Event 2: GORUCK BFF (Basic Functional Fitness) Test

This event was a prescribed set of 4 exercises, all known in advance, with GRT's choice of weights. I chose the BASIC set of weights, which is what I had done back in November when I first signed up for this event. I wanted to see what I could improve over the months of training. 

I'm most proud of the improvement in the sandbag burpees, although it was only by a few... those things are HARD. 

Only got one photo of John finishing the 1 mile ruck/run.

Patch #2 earned

And then it was time for the day's main event... 

Event 3: 12-Mile Star Course

10# plate in ruck + supplies

~15 or so checkpoints

Start time 0900 hours

This was a different kind of event. You had your rucksack with supplies and prescribed weight, but other than that, it's all about the miles. We were given a handful of checkpoints at a time to go out, take a selfie, and then return back for the next set. John and I teamed up and he downloaded an app on his phone that delivery drivers use to plan routes - it turned out to be extremely helpful in plotting the shortest distance to cover all the points and the most logical order in which to visit them.

Took us just about 4 hours total and we covered almost 11.5 miles. Definitely a long day on our feet, but we made it enjoyable!

The rest of the evening was dinner (fooooood) and early sleep time.

Event 4: GORUCK Basic

20# plate in ruck + supplies

5-6 hours

Starting at 1000 hours

This event was similar in style to Friday's Light, just longer in duration and distance. Same setup of carrying coupons as a group from point to point, doing various activities & PT at each stop. We were concerned there would be rain moving in towards the afternoon but we finished up right before it started to sprinkle on us. I managed to carry the 80# sandbag for the last ~1/4 mile or so, and was pretty proud of that!

Carrying a full water bladder

Flag carrier

Team!

Mission complete

Patches from the weekend + Team Leader coin with Barbarossa's logo

Overall I enjoyed it but think I'd be up for a harder challenge in the future... gotta find a Tough or a Triple Basic to do sometime!