Poor Decisions and Bad Luck

So I made the trip up to Lutsen for the spring Superior trail races. I decided late last night that I would be able to run the 25K in hopes that it wouldn't beat me up. The Superior Hiking Trail can be in rough shape this time of year and parts of it would leave a lot of the front runners on their bellies. More on that later.

 My main concern was my achilles. I knew that running on the trails near home were going well but I still had some concerns about the difficult terrain to be dealt with during the race. I warmed up adequately in the NB 790's and then I did a loop in my Nike Haywards.  With their soft uppers and thicker midsole, this would be my major "error in judgement" of the morning. I chose the Nike Haywards. 

The day was beautiful. Mid 50's at the start with sunny skies and a bit of a head wind for the first 0.6 miles until we hit the single track. The front runner for the day, Greg Hexum, took off from the gun and that would be the last anybody would see of him until the turn around of the out and back course. That would leave a big chase group consisting of five to seven runners that consisted of veteran SHT runners Andy Holak and Dave Phipo. My first sign of trouble was just after the single track started I rolled my left ankle and Dave actually caught my left arm as he was striding bye. It caused me a bit of pain for a couple of minutes but I was still moving and striding relatively well. (I would roll the left three more times as well as rolling the right ankle once) Just as we were starting another climb I wiped my brow with my golves and I swiped too low and wiped my right contact lens out of vision. Ten minutes of hoping it would correct itself and loosing two positions I finally stepped off to the side and dug my contact out of the back of my eye. I popped it back in and back on the trails. I lost five positions in the process but after five or so minutes I gained three back and got into pace with Dave Schunemen. We had a nice run going and just as we were getting to climb up Oberg we saw Hexum heading back to the finish. As it would be at this point he had an eight minute lead on me. I wanted to get out and see the others and get accurate checks of their respective lead and just as I was heading down to the parking lot where the turn and aid station was I saw 2nd-5th place all within 30 seconds of each other, and about three minutes up on me. After taking a gel, washing it down with water, eating a fist full of strawberries, and grasping a fist full of gummy bears I had my bottle filled and I was heading back to the finish. I had all the confidence that I would be catching someone up ahead. That never happened. All four in front were running strong and not to be caught. After sharing stories, I would find out that all but one runner in front of me would fall or crash at some point. I ended my pursuit of catching someone after my fourth and final left ankle roll. I just wanted to get to the finish without breaking anything. I crossed the line in 2:00:20, approximately two and  half or three minutes from the action of 2-5th place.

I can't say I am excited to run this race again, as I have some serious strength work to do. Trail running sure brings out a persons weaknesses. In the end I had fun but could have done without the ankle turns and contact "issue".

Splits 1:00:04, and 1:00:16. Not too bad on that course.

Race 2:00:20 6th place

Totals: 16 miles with warm up