dude

so i have been having a ton of fun at wendesday night mountain biking. i really like riding out there and I have been getting better with my bike handling by being able to ride harder and faster there. pretty much every wednesday i get all car sick on the way there but by the time racde time starts i am ready to go and ready to have fun. now i know why eric likes to go there every week and has been for so many years.

good gracious, onto saturday. i did the cougar mountain 10 miler. wholy shirt. so its not that i wasn't up for doing the race, because i was. i wasn't nervous, i just wasn't sure what was going to happen and i didn't know what to expect. last weekend when i was doing the 1x1s on the trail i had fun, although i was dying of dehydration, because i had never run so fast on the trail. it was kind of scary but at the same time just plain fun. eric said he likes trail running because its kind of like mountain biking, just without the bike. which is true, but it was funny to hear him say it.

we were lucky this weekend in that eric's mom came to visit with the cousins, so she hung out with the kids and eric came with me to the race. we got there about an hour early and i registered and then we just sort of hung out. i got into the potty line and then it was pretty much time to start.

and we were off. we started out by running around this field that was totally sketchy. i turned my ankles probably 15 times in that first 1/4 mile, if it was even that long. but we got around that and then onto the road. next thing ya know we were turning into the trail, which was quick, but that was good. i hung with a pretty big group for the first few miles. there was some up hill but nothing unbearable. i took my own water bottle filled with my very favorite LUNA Sport Pink Grapfruit Electrolyte Splash and two CLIF shots. I wasn't sure what I would need but after last weekend, I knew I needed something. i passed up the first water stop and then the 2nd. i think it was after the 2nd that we turned and went straight up hill. for ever. and ever. and ever again. it was a death march. i never have a good sense of when things happen during a race but i do remember that we were going up for a really long time. then once we were done going up, we went straight down. for a really long time. and it was long and steep and there were a bunch of switch backs. i thought about how i might like to run up that instead of down it. i did tend to walk down the whole thing and i got passed by prolly 20-30 people going down that hill alone. i just couldn't do it. i need to get some trail shoes and my legs were just killing me. my quads, my shins and my calves and oh yeah, those toe nails that i chose to not get fixed yet. once we got to the bottm though it was so awesome that we just started going up hill again. now i wasn't having very much fun but i was ok. i was going slower than my stretch goal, and even slower than i thought i could do. but i got over it. i knew that all that down hill really hurt me. now, back in 2006, i had done the 13 miler and i was very mis guided and very much ready to cry several times. not once in this race did i feel like i was going to cry and really i felt ok the whole time. i did go through my whole water bottle and both clif shots and even stopped at the last water station for 2 cups of water.
i was pretty stocked when i saw eric on the trail and knew i was almost done. i came towards the finish line and saw that i could come in just under 2:10 so i pushed to the end. i went right over to fill my water bottle and chugged it and then filled it again. i shook hands with a few people who i was running with at the end and then started walking towards the car. i got only part of the way and had to sit down. my legs hurt so much and i just couldn't go any more. eric found me and said he moved the car closer, thank goodness and i asked him if we could please go to the lake so i could stand in it. he took me to lake sammamish and dropped me off close by and then went to park the car. i waded in up to my mid thighs and it felt so good. the only thing that was totally gross was that if i stood there for even just a tiny bit, the little fish would come and chew between my toes. i really didn't like that at all.
but all in all, i would call the day a sucess.