Hills and Trails... Oh My! 1/2 marathon

HILLS AND TRAILS...OH MY!!!

Well I thought I would write on my latest running experience. It is very difficult in Michigan to find a run on a Saturday. I felt strongly that we shouldn't use the sabbath for events like these. The good news is we found one. It was local and we thought we would give it a try. The description of the course said it would be hilly and challenging with some trail running. I figured it wouldn't be record time for me and my running buddies but we would do it. Things started off good. After about 3 miles we made a turn into what they call "trail running" I was not prepared. You couldn't put both of your feet together at the same time on this trail. Not to mention the hills (Mountains) we had to climb. So I pressed forward on this trail. I jumped over mud, rocks lakes and just yucky stuff. Once I would get to the top of the hill I realized I would have to go down and that was challenging. Anyone listening to me would have had a great chuckle out of me. The whole time I was saying "oh crap! Oh No! Oh Crap! It was funny. Then I did a LeeAnne. I realized I hadn't seen a mile marker in some time. This race was small so you weren't running in packs. My two friends and I are different paces so we weren't together. I realized I was alone with the exception of a couple in front of me. When the man stopped running and declared "I think we are lost" I just about cried. I knew I had been running a while and I had a bad feeling he was right. Well we ran for a bit more thinking. We were thirsty, hot and somehow we needed to find our way out of these woods. We did only to find about 15 other runners standing at the clearance lost too. It was comical. Somehow we missed the arrows. I think it was poorly marked and it was the officiators fault, but I will let it go. So by the time we found road I ran over the mileage and was exhausted. Oh yeah and the description of the race said the last 3 miles were down hill. WRONG! The only mile that was down hill was the last. I crawled across that finish line. What was worse is my one girlfriend behind me got even more lost. An hour later we sent someone to look for her and she had to be brouhgt in on the fire truck. It really stunk! Here we trained for our end of season event and we tanked it. Oh well next time I think I will stay away from courses with trails and hills in the description and I will bring a whistle in case I get lost. Thanks Treva and Shelly for being fantastic!