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April 9, 2006
Rosliston Trail Run
It was a nice morning when I left home, but by the time we got to the Rosliston Forestry Centre it was getting a little cold. I entered, received race number 177 and stretched a little while waiting to see who else would come run from our club. Soon after we arrived another 8 or 10 people from our club arrived.
The start of the run was nice and easy... some gravel and a few patches of grass, but nothing seriously bothering. A km and a half into the race though, we turned a corner and I found myself ankle-deep in mud. The marshal pulled a face (trying not to laugh), asked if I was okay and I was on my way.
Now my shoes were heavily soaked with water and mud and to make things worse, it kept picking up stones, grass and more mud along the way. 3km into the race I was feeling ready to just stop and give up. Then I saw H from the club and thought to myself... when I was younger than 20, I ran all my cross country races barefoot. Why not today?
So I took off my heavy shoes, left them with H and ran along. Now as I passed people along the route, I heard the words "she doesn't have any shoes on" a fair few times. This was normally followed by "how can she run like that?" But my second loop of the two loop course went a whole lot faster than the one with shoes went and by the end I even had a little bit of energy left to make sure I finished in front of the woman that was chasing me the whole second loop
It was a good race, although it was closer to 6 miles than the 5 miles that the organisers advertised. It was a load of fun, took me ages to get the mud off me ... and my shoes are hung out to dry since I had to give them a good wash when I got home.
Posted by karinm at April 9, 2006 1:54 PM
Comments
Trail races are awesome. The mud is half the fun. I have to admit when I first looked at the pics, before I began reading, I thought wow...those are interesting tatoo designs...lol.
Posted by: Dawn (aka Pink Lady) at April 9, 2006 7:29 PM
mud on legs...what a beautiful sight. and you did it barefoot. briliant. you're my hero, karin!
Posted by: jeff at April 10, 2006 10:54 PM
Barefoot! How cool!
Posted by: Susan at April 11, 2006 10:55 PM
Sounds like an absolute blast. Dunno why mud just feels so good...
Posted by: jank at April 14, 2006 2:53 PM