Thomas and I love running at Keystone Ancient Forest together. They've been having a race out there for 10 years, but we've never done it. I really wanted to do it the last couple years, but last year it was too soon after the Houston Marathon and the year before I got Covid and wasn't feeling up to it in time. This year I tentatively added it to my training schedule. I really wanted to run a road 10k because I felt like I could run a fast time, but I couldn't find one that would work so I decided a trail 10k it was! I invited Thomas to come run it with me and he decided to do it. I was hoping to be able to run with him, but he's a stronger trail runner than I am so I figured he'd likely beat me. I found out the top overall male and female in each race win money so I was also hoping to compete for that. I figured I'd skip my 6 mile tempo the Wednesday before the race if I felt like I could compete for the win. I checked the participants when I signed up and saw a girl in the 10k who I knew would beat me so I decided to go ahead and run my tempo. It also happened to be 25+ mph wind gusts so after I ran my tempo, I felt like I'd gotten beat up!
The race didn't start until 9am. I slept until a little after 7, did yoga, and ate some oatmeal before we left for the race. It was really cold Saturday morning (feels like 17 degrees) and felt even colder after running in 60 degree weather all week. I was pretty relaxed since my goal was to have fun with the race. Once we were parked, we didn't have much time so we didn't run a warmup. The line for the women's bathroom was so long, I didn't have time to go before the race. I would have popped a squat in the woods, but I wasn't interested in having bare skin exposed with 17 degree weather.
The race took off and Thomas went out really fast. There was a girl ahead of him and he was running right with another girl. I was solidly in 3rd female. I didn't want to go out too fast because there's a mile long hill at around 2.5 miles into the race, so I wanted to be a little bit conservative. I was super surprised when my 1st mile was 7:35. I was hoping to average around 8:00 pace and wasn't expecting to be anywhere near that fast! My 2nd mile was 7:30. Then we hit the big hill. I felt like I was running so slow up it and there was such a big gap between the person closest in front of me and me, so I wasn't super motivated to push up the hill. I started thinking that my Strava segment on the hill during the race wasn't even going to be my fastest Strava segment on the hill. After the race, I saw it was a course record and I had run it way faster than I ever had when out running the course in training. That mile was 8:42. My goal after that was to keep all my miles close to 8:00 so I would have an 8:00 average.
Once I made it to the top of the hill and out into the field-like area I could see there were 2 guys ahead of me who I had caught quite a bit on the hill. One of them even walked a little at the top of the hill. I was so excited I had 3 miles left to catch them and that helped me drop the hammer again. I went through mile 4 in 8:06. When we got to the point on the course where the 15k went to the right and the 10k was to the left, the 2 guys ahead of me turned off for the 15k which was disappointing. Thomas and 2 other people he was running with were the closest to me and they had a very sizable lead on me. Mile 5 was 7:27 and mile 6 was 7:23. I was excited that was my fastest mile of the race! We did an out and back with a little lollipop section that was also part of the 5k course so I was having to yell out to 5k walkers and run/walkers so I could get through. It slowed me down a bit getting around all the 5kers. Then we turned onto a paved section for the last portion of the race which was mostly downhill with a bunch of tight turns with switchbacks. My left hip was sore the next day from all the turns! My goal was to finish the race in under 50 minutes and I looked down toward the end of the race and saw I was at 6.3 miles and still had a ways to go. I knew the race was going to be long. I finished in 50:36 which was very close to sub-50 even with an extra 0.3 miles I wasn't expecting. The course read 6.5 miles on my watch. Others had it as long as 6.7. I ran the last 0.5 in 7:44 pace.
We waited around after the race for awards and it was so cold! Thankfully they had a fire pit so we could stay warm. They also had coffee and Chick fil A chicken biscuits. I was 3rd overall female, but the only overall awards were for 1st place. I won my age group and joked that I was the first woman who finished because the girls who finished ahead of me were in their teens. Thomas was 2nd in his age group. He was 7th overall in 49:42 and I was 8th overall in 50:36. The race was an absolute blast and the food and drinks after were awesome! I was a little bummed to see I would have easily won the 15k and $150, but I was glad I ran the 10k because it was an absolute blast! I'd definitely like to run this one again.
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