Am I Really a Runner?: Dry Creek Trail Half Marathon

Back on February 22, the Dry Creek Trail Marathon was scheduled but cancelled due to weather. The trail was still covered in ice from an ice storm earlier the previous week. They cancelled it at the last minute but rescheduled for the following weekend, March 1.

I found out that runners could register up until midnight on February 27 and wanted a good long run that I wouldn’t skip. Never mind that my daughter was coming to town for the weekend, we decided that we could run it in the morning (8am start time, approximately an hour away from the house) and still be back before my daughter was ready to do anything else. She tends to sleep until noon anyhow.

My daughter is as much (or more) of a procrastinator as I am, so she didn’t show up to the house until around 6pm on Saturday the 28^th. We decided to cook some burgers on the grill and hang out at the house. We watched a couple of movies and got to bed sometime after 11pm. The next morning, the alarm went off at 0500. Ugh. I think I finally got up at 0555, since we needed to leave the house before 0615. Weather was awesome, but the weather man was calling for rain. I hoped it wouldn’t rain, dressed for it anyway and went out the door. G had my breakfast ready for me, and I ate it in the car on the way.

We get to the race, which is waaaaay out in a wildlife refuge northwest of the city. There were 2 restrooms, and 1 was broken. Luckily, the turnout wasn’t that great, so the line moved pretty fast. Picked up our numbers and got ready to run. It was at this time that we were told there would be an award for, among others, “Muddiest” (ick) and “Most whining” – I was robbed, that one should have been mine. When I heard muddiest, I was questioning my decision to run this thing. I HATE getting muddy.

After everybody gets through the restroom line, it’s time for the race to start. We take off, and we’re dodging ice and puddles through the first 4-5 miles. After the second aid station, it was a SERIOUS trail and covered in leaves and straight downhill. I was certain that I was going to plummet to my death. This is NOT my thing. That is where every single person passed me. Around a mile later, we’re back on the regular trail and it’s straight uphill for a full mile and a half. If they had been monitoring the race, this is where I would have won the award for whining. At mile 7-8, you get to run right past the finish line for an out and back to the finish. I contemplated calling it a day and “finishing” then, but we had come all this way. So, out I go. M-I-S-E-R-Y. It rained the entire time we were running, with the exception of about the first 5 minutes. Not a driving rain, just an annoying drizzle.

I think it wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been so wet, but I learned that trail running is most definitely not my thing.

I finished dead last with an official finish time of 3:18:26. I finished. I’m calling it a win.