If I'm drinking beer at 11am on a Saturday, it's either been a really good or a really bad day. This time, fortunately, it was the former. I'd only decided to do the Fragrance Lake Half Marathon about a week in advance and wasn't specifically trained or tapered for it, but like most of my races this year, I just wanted to run fun trails, visit new places and meet cool people, and I succeeded.
I love the trail running community and am continually impressed with the amazing people that I meet. This weekend, I had the pleasure of sharing a few miles and laughs with my SWAP teammate, Nikki, right from the start which put me in a really good mood and filled me with positive energy.
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| Me and Nikki cruising along the Interurban trail |
I had run parts of the Fragrance Lake course before when I raced Chuckanut 50km and the Bellingham Trail Marathon so I had an idea what to expect. With over 3,300 feet of vertical, it's definitely not an easy race, but I knew I'd be okay on the climb (always my favourite part), could handle the quad-pounding descent if the footing wasn't too tricky (it wasn't) and then I'd just have to try not to die on the technical ridge trail (slick from heavy rainfall the day prior...ugh).
Although, I didn't exactly enjoy the ridge trail, I did survive it with no blood shed or bones broken so that's something. I know I lost a fair bit of time along that section (exacerbated by an emergent yet still annoying "pit stop"!?) so I expected someone to overtake me, but no one did. Whew!
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| Love the up! |
Once Nikki and I split up at the start of the climb, I ran almost entirely alone. The second place man was within sight for most of the first half but then I caught him near the top of the climb. He later passed me in the final kilometre which burns me a bit because I thought I was doing pretty well on the downhill. I guess I'm going to have to work on my finishing kick!
After the race, I had a nice chat with Maria Dalzot who was the OVERALL winner and holds the women's course record. I'm totally okay with coming in second to an elite runner like Maria! It's also pretty awesome to see four women in the top 10.
Full results here.
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| Top 3 ladies - speedy and colourful :) |
Thanks to Tad Davis for the photos and to Destination Trail for putting on this fantastic race!
And, as always, my heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to my husband Dave and coach David for their roles in getting me to the starting line of every race happy and healthy.
