Grasslands Trail Run

On Saturday I ran my first ever trail race.  As I have mentioned in previous posts I have been training this winter/spring for the half marathon.

Sara, Abe, and I woke up at 5:30 Saturday morning and made the drive out to LBJ National Grasslands near Decatur, TX...which is about an hour and a half north of Dallas.  The weather Saturday morning was both good and bad.  Storms were rolling through the area bringing lots of rain, lightning, and hail.  This weather continued during the race.  The rain was actually very refreshing and helped to pack down the mostly sandy trail.  The lightning was scary right over head when all the runners were exposed out in the middle of the fields.

Trail races are very different from road races.  Obviously, they are run on a very different type of terrain which makes race management more difficult because most of the trails are remote not allowing volunteers to be able to access most of the route.  I say this because the start of the race got off to a little bit of a rough start.  I started in the lead pack of about 10 people and about a half mile into the run we all took a wrong turn.  We were supposed to be following the blue trail on the map above but somehow missed the first major turn to the left.  Colored blazes mark the trail similar to hiking trails along with colored flags attached to trees limbs to mark turns.  This wrong turn added about an extra mile and a half to the run.  So my 13.1 mile race turned into a 14.5 mile race.  I was pretty bummed about it, not because I was trying to win but because I wanted to know what my legitimate trail half marathon time would be compared to on a road.  The rest of the race went relatively smoothly though.  After passing all the slower people/walkers (which is quite a task on a single track trail) who didn't miss the turn, it was smooth sailing.  With all the rain the trail got pretty muddy and slick in areas, so trying not to fall was a challenge.  With the detour, I ended up finishing the 14.5 miles 2:00 hours.  That was good enough for 15th place out of the 300 or so racers.  With all the rain, mud, lightning, and the detour I was happy with the finish.  I really enjoyed the trail run.  It was a much different experience than a road race.  A lot less people are involved and the trails are much more fun to get out and run on.  I'm going to find my next race to sign up for soon.  I'm thinking it is going to be a trail 50K sometime in June.

Here are a few pics that Abe took at Grasslands: