Santa Monica Mountains Trail Race

On Sunday (I will repent) I ran my first trail race! It was an awesome experience, a beautiful day, and a great location. My friends Lauren and Kevin Gleason convinced me to sign up for this race about a month ago and run it with them. Lauren & I signed up for the 18K and Kevin was going for it all in the 50K. The morning of the race I fed Jameson around 5am, got up and out of the house right after 6am and down to the Gleason's home where we all left together at 645am. We drove down to Oxnard and then out to the PCH, just past Point Mugu and parked along the ocean next to La Jolla canyon. Walked in, grabbed our bib numbers and about 35 minutes later we were running on the trails. The race started with uphill switch backs all the way to the top of the first little mountain, about 2.5 miles. I surprised myself and jogged all the way up. Normally I don't make it very far running uphill and I end up hiking instead. Once we were at the top, the view was gorgeous! Beautiful blue sparkling ocean, clear and crisp morning and perfect running conditions. It worked out in our benefit that it had rained the day before because the trails weren't slippery and had just the right amount of stick to them. There was only a couple spots where the mud stuck to my shoes enough that I had to slide my feet on the rocks to take the extra inch of weight off. Anyway, the trails were nice and there was only one really challenging climb from mile 6.5 to mile 8. My legs were really tired by that point but I knew it would be pretty much all down hill from there, so I ran. It was nice to descend into the finish area. I ended up surprising myself again when I finished in 1:55. I thought for sure it was going to take me around 2 and half hours. I also was the 3rd girl to finish, right behind Lauren, so I got a ribbon! I've never placed in a race before. Pretty cool.

I got home at 2pm and was very ready to feed Jameson again. It was really nice to have a morning to myself, to be outside enjoying God's beautiful creation and get some good exercise and time away. I REALLY needed it.