I did my first ever trail run over Spring Break in Seattle – it was a half marathon. No moderate escalation of miles on a trail or mountainside, I just went straight to the half marathon. If I would have thought about beforehand, I would have been able to realize that a trail run is going to be significantly more difficult than a regular run on the street or a path, but somehow this never crossed my mind. Even mere minutes before the race I was telling Michelle “I should for sure finish before two hours because that would be like doing a 4 hour marathon pace and this is only half of that distance.”
Trail running is easily 1.5 times as hard as regular road running. In my case, in the half marathon I did in
Seattle, the entire course was pure sloppy thick mud. It was also raining basically the entire
time. Also, I didn’t really bring all of
my running gear/clothes on vacation so I was wearing cotton sweatpants (that
got soaking wet pretty quickly) that with no drawstring and that weighted me
down quite a bit. The entire 13 miles
consisted of leaping over puddles and mud, trying to maintain balance and not
fall down the mountain (it was a pretty narrow course). I actually managed to ‘run’ basically the
entire time and yet I came in at just under 3 hours, averaging around 12 minute
miles. I really was running pretty much
the entire time, so you can understand how much more difficult the course was
if it made me go about three minutes per mile slower than I would have been
running on a street.
Having said all of this, it was an amazing experience! I am super glad I signed up for the
race. The trail was beautiful, extremely
green and very full of plant life – as is this entire part of the country. I would totally do another trail run, and
knowing what I am getting myself into will help a lot for the next time I do
one of these races.
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