I ran my first trail race last weekend. I ran the Ni-Bthaska-Ke 12k in Louisville, NE at Platte River State Park.
How hard can a trail race be in Nebraska? It seems like that pancake flat state will have mostly groomed dirt trails or bike paths. I even called bluff on the course elevation profile!
I hit the road at 5 am on Friday morning, leaving Colorado in my wife's Jetta TDI to spend the day driving the beautiful backroads of Kansas and Nebraska. It's just me, a bunch of Freakonomics and Planet Money podcasts, and 550 miles ahead.
The adventure began shortly after I left Colorado for Kansas. I-70 is a lonely route through the middle of nothing in western Kansas, so I had GPS to cut about an hour off the drive. We'd be taking the rural highways to get from I-70 up to I-80. It was a simple two turn detour that would shave about 30 minutes off of my 8 hours in a car. That plan went well until about 20 minutes off of the interstate, the route I was slated to take was closed. Not detoured. Closed!
I consider myself pretty intuitive and I grew up in the Midwest as well, so I know that farms go in a grid. The route I wanted was a northeasterly rural highway connecting the Kansas highway to the Nebraska one. I would now just take the farm roads a mile north, then a mile east until the route reopened. How hard could that be?
It wouldn't have been such a hard endeavor if not for the fact that I was driving a VW Jetta on dirt roads. I'm not talking graded dirt/gravel roads. I'm talking combine routes labeled with names like “112, 113, 114.” I wouldn't advise others to drive a compact car on these “roads” if it could be avoided. This went on for about 30 miles and the main road still had no signs of opening or of any construction. Enter UPS truck! I see a UPS truck turning onto the “closed” road and figured that if he's doing it, so am I! We drove on the closed road for another 80 miles before entering Kearney, Nebraska and the road magically being “open” again. My time saver turned out to be a break-even.
After a quick stop at an Arby's for lunch and a potty break, I was back on the road and at the course in no time (time is really a vacuum when driving rural Kansas and Nebraska roads). I got there and met with Will and Linda, the race directors, who showed me the course entry-point. Begin the fun!
I shook out my long drive with a trail run in the rain on some of the most ridiculous mud hills I've ever run! The grades of the hills were such that I was running 8:30-9:00 mile pace with decent effort being expended. Somehow that made me more excited for a chance to race on trials. Tomorrow was going to be fun!
When the gun went off, I knew the course would be tough. It was over 1200 ft. of elevation change in 12k. Most of the terrain was steep, muddy hills and there were downed trees, a small flow of water, 5 bridge crossings, tight serpentines down hills, maybe even a sea monster; I'm not sure. I went out hard the first half and opened up a gap on the field early, then I paid for it. The second half of the race, the hills felt like mountains and only the rich, sea-level air kept me moving forward as quickly as I was.
I wound up winning and apparently breaking the course record. Most importantly, I had fun racing again. I plan to focus more on trail racing the remainder of this year. I really want to have fun every time I toe the line now. I have nothing to prove in a trail race. I have no pressure. I get to read my body and run accordingly. With one race in the bank right now, I'm hooked on trail running! Thanks, Will and Linda for bringing me out. Runguru events, as always, were excellently done. The hand-made awards are so fitting and personal. Omaha steaks post-race was certainly a nice bonus too!
