I ran the 15K Philosopher’s Way Trail Run today. It’s on the eastern end of Carolina North Forest. I’ve been running a lot on the western end of these trails so I had never seen any of these trails before. The weather was perfect - sunny and mid 50’s - and the trails were in good shape. I only got a little muddy. The race was very well organized for such a small race. The only minor annoyance was the beginning of the race where a couple hundred runners turned from a 20 foot wide course onto a single track bike course. Everyone came to a halt and we all walked for about a quarter mile. I didn’t really start running smoothly until about a mile in and the next 3 miles were spent passing and waiting, passing and waiting. That in itself is ok … it’s part of trail running. I would’ve just extended the time that we were on the wide track to give time for people to string out a bit more. Like I said … minor annoyance.

Once we got moving, I had a blast. I just love running in the woods. I felt unstoppable until about mile 7 and then I lost my gumption and my thighs started to complain. I held on to the people in front of me as much as I could, but one person did pass me at the end, the only person to pass me in the last 5 miles. I think I saw 1:33 as I finished, but my GPS time was 1:29:09. I think it stops the clock whenever it thinks I have stopped and it got really confused on the trails. It recorded my final distance as 6.0 miles which is 3.3 miles too short. I had suspicions that my earlier trail runs were underestimated, but never thought it was this inaccurate. My B goal was 1:30 so I was close and I definitely hit my C goal.

I’ll definitely be doing this run again next year, if I’m free. I’m currently posting my runs at dailymile (a cool site built by two UW grads), so follow me there!