Rick is audio-blogging today as

Rick is audio-blogging today as he runs the Rocky Raccoon 100-Miler with Dalton. The race started at 6 a.m. and their goal, according to Jon, is to finish sometime between 6 a.m. and noon tomorrow. Best of luck to both of them!!
In the meantime, I ran the Buffalo Wallow 6K cross-country race this morning. Gavin came along as well, so that was nice. I finished in 39:06 and Gavin finished right around 29:00. I saw a bunch of people there and met a few more. The On The Run team took 4 of the top 11 spots, with 1, 2, 4, and Sam finishing in 11th place. I officially met Joe, and finally met the infamous Steve who’s been sending me emails about the RRCA website all these months. 😉
It is so much fun to go to races now that I know so many people out there. It really gets my weekend off to a great start.
My race went well. It was the first cross-country race I’d ever done, and it was certainly harder than a normal road race even though by cross-country standards it was an easy course (or so I was told). The Master’s Men started at 8:00, so the three-loop course had already been trodden three times before the women’s race started at 8:45 — and it was pretty muddy in parts.
At 8:45, the gun went off and the herd of women started running! The funniest moment was about a tenth of a mile into the race as the course narrowed to go between two lines of trees just before climbing one of the two steep hills. There was a mud pit right at the bottom of the hill, and many of the women immediately slowed to gingerly step around the mud as best as they could, with many girly complaints of “ew!” and “yuck!” I had to laugh. It’s a cross country race! And after the rain of last week, yeah, we were going to get a little muddy.
I made it up the steep hill and around the top end of the course. We ran along Allen Parkway just for a moment before diving back down a steep hill to pass the start line (and spectators) and go under Montrose. The second steep hill was climbing from the park back up to Allen Parkway, where we then ran flat to the other end of the loop. At that point we turned and headed back downhill into the park, and weaved past trees and up and down small hills, back under Montrose, and past the start/finish line to begin another loop.
I was feeling good on the first loop and ran up both steep inclines. I passed the clock in ~12:30 for my first loop. The loop had to have been ~1.25 miles, so I was on 10:00 pace or so. I was happy, but was also starting to feel pretty tired and I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain that over two more loops.
I walked up both steep portions of the second loop, which seemed to leave me just as tired as if I’d run them. They were seriously steep! I came around the second loop to see the clock reading ~25:30. 12:30 for the first lap, 13:00 for the second. Right as I began my third loop, the winning woman finished the race. I was thiiiiiis close to getting lapped. 😉
The third lap was, of course, the worst. I walked up both inclines again, and took an additional walking break towards the other end of the loop. It was cold this morning (below 50) and so I’d worn a long sleeve shirt. The start/finish line was mostly in the shade, so it seemed like the right thing to do. But the majority of course was in the sun, and once I started running it was a little hot and I wished I’d worn short sleeves!
As we turned the final corner and headed back towards the start/finish for the final time, I decided to try to catch up to 4-5 women who were strung out one-by-one a little in front of me. I’d been running with them pretty solidly until my last little walk break, and I didn’t want to fade at the end. I set my sights on the last woman in the line, and managed to pass her with maybe 0.2 miles to go. I never caught any of the others, but I closed the gap and the group of 5-6 of us all finished within 10-20 seconds of each other.
All in all, my time was 39:06, or right at 10:30/mile for the 6K (3.72 mile) course. I slowed down by about 30 seconds each loop — 12:30, 13:00, and 13:30 or so. My average heart rate was a very high 194 — I’m not lying when I said I was really struggling out there with the hills and the sun. It was definitely one of the toughest races I’ve run, but I’m glad I was able to push myself to a good finish.
p.s. There’s a photo of me in the Striders photo album. Yep, as a result of helping Steve out with the RRCA Convention webpage, I am now a Houston Strider as well as a Running Blogger. 🙂 A month ago I didn’t belong to any running clubs; now I’m in two!