I am attempting to record my running adventures while chasing my goal of running the Western States 100. I want to chronicle the joy of running with friends, the fun of running alone, and the excitement of running trails.

I run primarily in the Houston area, which suffers from a trail deficiency. I also spend some time in the Austin area. I love to race and I enjoy using races as training runs for other races. Occassionally, I will get over excited on my "training race/runs" and run too fast (go figure). Luckily, I have a trail-ultra running husband who understands this craziness and tries to keep me grounded (not to mention hydrated, rested, and paced properly.)

I want to share my ups and downs, my successes and failures and try to keep motivated to my ultimate goal. Plus, if I share all of my bone-headed mistakes with you-- you will not have to make them!



Monday, September 20, 2010

Weekend Fun in Austin 9-18-10

We started the weekend with a quick little 11 miler from the condo to Town Lake and back.  Nothing like a solid two miles of uphill at the end of a run to let you know that you need to do more hill work.  We started at about 5:30, and it was pretty warm by the time that we finished.  We cleaned up and headed out for breakfast.

We also wanted to mountain bike at Rocky Hill Ranch on Saturday (so we could have margaritas on Saturday night--priorities you know).  We decided that we would have some breakfast, relax, shop a little, then head out to RHR for some mountain biking.  We are signed up for an adventure race (our first) next weekend.  The race is at RHR and we wanted to pre-ride the course to have an idea about the difficulty of the terrain.  We have both run a race at RHR but we did not really remember that much about the course.

When we arrived, it looked very dark and ominous to the south.  We geared up and headed out anyway.  OH MY GOD- that is all that was going through my head for the first 1/2 mile.  Then I switched to, "I am going to die out here."  We encountered another couple (while panting on the side of the trail), who were out pre-riding the course before they do the 24 hours at RHR next weekend.  They are competing as a relay team, they will switch out every lap- for 24 hours.  Almost as crazy as runners! 

When the rain started, all of the rocks in the trail (believe me- there are plenty, hence the name ROCKY Hill Ranch), started getting slippery.  Oh boy, I was worried that I would not fall all day.  It was a LOT harder than I anticipated.  WHAT was I thinking?  My thought process changed to, "I just want to survive." We managed 7 miles (Bruce was "managing" considerably better than I was)- I was exhausted at the end.  It was raining off and on, the trail was wet and slippery and my mountain biking skills have atrophied immensely.   When we finished, we showered off and headed home.  Just enough time for a shower before heading across the street to Matt's for a couple of Z-Margaritas.  Ahhhh, now that made it all worthwhile.
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