RACE 1 - Hit the Trail 5

Excellent! First race in the bag...

Mud, glorious mud. This was a very mucky course to run, with a number of climbs and a couple of water sections! Five other Greenfield Greyhounds ran this 5 mile (8km) course with me, which ended up being slightly shorter at 7.75km by my watch.

There was light rain throughout, but the trees sheltered us from most of it. The day was cold (5 degrees, closer to 1 degree with wind chill), but again the course took us through woodland that kept us feeling warmer (as did the running, of course).

There were 3 steep climbs of around 25m (82ft) elevation gain - I decided to take a note out of a fellow runner's strategy book (thanks Allan!) and walked up the first two (along with a lot of other runners) in order to conserve a bit of energy for the rest of the course.  The last was right at the end - that final stretch was tough.

There were a lot of puddles throughout the course, some tricky patches of mud that had us all slipping and sliding trying to stay upright, a large puddle that got us foot-wet about 3km in and 3km from the end a massive puddle about 8m long. With the turbulence of me running through it, I ended up soaked to the knees in cold muddy water - a lovely feature of the course.

I was aiming for a time of around 45-50 minutes and managed 44m 46s, so very pleased with that. It's the first time I've run the course, so that's a PB :) I've set up a new photo's page, so feel free to have a look at some more pictures from the race.

Next up is Lyme Park Night Run on the 23rd, which could be a similar course just in the dark! I'm planning to go to the Lyme Park Parkrun on the 16th to get a better idea of the terrain.