Race 27 - Battle at Big Creek

Their website said "rolling hills, climbs, single track, double track, roots, rocks (did we say rocks)".  Should have paid more attention to that "did we say rocks" part:

did we say rocks?

So with the marathon a week away, I needed to get 10 miles in today and months ago when I put this schedule together, this 10 mile trail race made so much sense.  Right...  It was a 5 mile course that we did twice.  Paranoia was actually setting in, the fear of twisting an ankle or worse and only a week away from the marathon, I was debating not doing the second loop.

The race started out on the concrete path for a half mile or so.  This allowed natural spacing to take place.  At first, after hitting the trail, it was still a little bit crowded, folks jockeying for position.  But that did not last too long.  For the majority of the race there was plenty of room and that was good because passing with the rocks/roots was not easy.

It was at about mile 3 where I saw a woman trip, fall, go down face first.  Not good.  She could not stand up.  There were a few others around, ended up noting the mileage at that point and getting to the next aid station so they could send someone up.  On my second loop, asked the volunteer at the aid station about her.  He wasn't sure which person I was asking about because there were a bunch he said.

To be fair though, the entire course was not as rocky as the picture above, it was a pretty nice trail and the perfect time of year to be on it.

The two things that I enjoyed the most about this trail, it was only about 20 minutes away and there was a lot of shade on the course.  What I did not enjoy, and this does conflict with one of the things I did like and you can't have it both ways, it was an urban trail.  Cars/traffic could be heard the entire time as we were close to roads.  But it was sure nice with only a 20 minute drive!

I'm glad I did this trail.  I did learn to pay more attention to detail about the course when doing things like this a week before a marathon.  : )