7.55 miles
1:00:20
66th place overall
This is my 2nd year running this race. I made the 3.5 hour drive with Lindsay and my 2 boys. This year we stayed at the Hampton Inn which is right next door to the hotel we stayed at the year before. The hotel was almost identical to the Holiday Inn Express, same pool, similar rooms, free wifi, free breakfast, etc.
The Worst Chile Rellenos Ever:We drove down to Danville on Friday and had a mediocre dinner at a place called La Potocina. This place had the most vile looking and tasting chile rellenos I have ever had. It was just a pool of unidentifiable meat and cheese with a couple scraps of green pepper. Gross. The rest of the food was just average crappy Mexican food. The highlight of La Potocina was this picture I took of the boys in front of the place riding a burro.
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| Jack with a happy ranchero |
The morning of the race we drove to Kickapoo State Park after buying some much needed sunglasses. I lost mine the week before on our trip to the Field Museum.
The race is 7.55 miles on a trail of mostly single-track and a couple of little hills in Kickapoo State Park. Kickapoo is a really beautiful park with a great trail system. I wore my screw shoes for better traction and this was a great decision. The trail was a bit muddy and loose due to the warm weather we have had this winter so the screw shoes gave me a great advantage on the downhill sections.
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| Coming up to the finish |
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| I ran so fast my shoes caught fire! |
I finished the race at 1:00:20 which is 15 seconds faster than last year. My training for this year's race was not as good as it was last year, but I ran a faster time. I really have no explanation for this. I have run less overall mileage, done less speed work and done shorter long runs.
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| Finisher medal |
I decided not to wear my Garmin for this race because that seemed to work out well for me in my last race, an 8k Turkey Trot. I think this is a good thing to do from time to time. For me, running based on feel is a better gauge of fitness than trying to be a slave to my watch during a race.
Again this year I missed the cutoff to get a free long sleeved shirt by being one of the first 50 men to cross the line. I did get a nice shiny medal which they didn't have last year. After the race I went to the post-race party and bought on the long sleeved shirt I missed getting by skill and fitness.
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| Cool shirt |
Then we went to Schroeder's Drive in for a greasy hamburger and some onion rings. Shroeder's was like an old style fast food place, I thought this type of place was extinct with the proliferation of all the other junk food places across the US.
As I did last year, I went back to the trail the next day to re-run the course. Last year I got lost and ran the course in reverse. This year I got lost and ended up running the 1st half of the course twice. Oh well.
I was spooked a bit for this 2nd run because there was a sign at the trailhead that stated the area was restricted to hangun shooters only. This scared me, I was not in the mood to get shot so I decided not to run the trail at all. Then I saw a woman who manages the horse tours in the state park and she said the hunting wasn't happening until the following weekend. So I ran the trail, but it still made me nervous.
