Elk Meadow Winter 10 Mile

This was not a planned race at all. It is kind of strange how I decided to register for this race. A while back, I decided to run up and down the mini incline as fast as I could. I put the workout on Strava and I ended up being the fastest female time in the last few years. Then, just a few short hours later, I got a notification that another girl went up and beat my time by just a few seconds. I got angry and ran it again and again until I beat her time. This continued all summer long. We kind of had a friendly, but not friendly competition going on. Then, she asked if I wanted to run a race with her. So, I registered. I only had 3 weeks to train for a 10 mile run up and down Bergen Peak, with 2000 feet of elevation gain. Then, I got really sick, the week before the race. Then, we had a snowstorm on the day before the race. Geesh! I almost backed out. I had never met the girl, but she drove us down to Bergen Peak in Evergreen. We talked the whole way and found out that we had a lot in common. We are both extremely competitive runners too. It was only 20 degrees at the race start with quite a bit of snow on the trail.

I ended up demoing some nice trail shoes that kept me from falling. When I started running, I quickly realized I was not ready for such a steep uphill. It was about 5 miles of uphill and 5 miles of downhill. Many people passed me on the uphill and many people also got lost. The trail was not marked well and some people ran longer or shorter than the 10 miles.

I had a blast running downhill but had a pretty hard fall. I caught my toe on a rock and flew up in the air and landed on my chest. It knocked the wind out of me, but I was just thankful I didn't hurt anything. I ended up finishing in 3^rd place and the girl I went up with finished in 2^nd. I was happy with that and happy that I survived, despite all of the setbacks.