All Downhill From Here

Yesterday I headed over to Canada Olympic Park for the Calgary Roadrunners first Cross Country race of the Grand Prix 2005/06 season. It had been raining off and on all night, so the trails would be muddy and the air was cool. We weren’t looking at snow, though, so I wore a warm up suit over my shorts and trail shoes and then doffed it just before the start.

I had brought the kiddos along. Little Runner lined up with a bunch of other kids and had a fun time running a short out-and-back of something under a mile (it was probably closer to half a mile). She did it all by herself and I was very proud of her.

Soccer Boy couldn’t be persuaded to race, even if I would have run the 4k with him, so I stuck with the 8k option and handed him the camera. I was SO EXCITED. Every year I love running this series more and more. As I bounced up and down like Tigger, my friend Dianne handed me some little gloves for my cold fingers.

I remembered to start my stopwatch and trotted off with all the rest on a fun downhill start. This course has several fairly steep hills in it, but everywhere I looked it was beautiful. We were on dirt paths the whole way, over grassy hills and winding through stands of aspen poplars. The dirt paths weren’t very slippery at the beginning, as they were kind of sandy. Later in the trees, fallen leaves covered most of the mud, but we had to be very careful of slippery roots. We crossed a couple of muddy, one-jump creeks at least 4 times in different places. There were a couple of very, very muddy, very, very steep inclines that demanded we use the surrounding trees as support.

At one point I raced down one side of a dip, leapt from a boulder across a creek and landed on the other side, ready to keep the momentum going up the other side. I faced a wall of mud, but what kept my already pumping adrenaline going were the long, vertical striations of where faster runners in spikes had slid and struggled before me. I decided shorts or no shorts, wild roses and thistles or not, I was using the bushes to get up this one. Halfway up I grabbed a limb that was not attached to anything and quickly had to grab a young sapling instead, as a foot slipped out from under me.

Dawn told me later that those striations weren’t spiked shoe marks, they were from her fingernails, as she clawed her way up ahead of me. 🙂 Dawn did the 4k route, as she has another race to do today. The 4k route was tough enough. She’ll probably post her report later, after she gets back from Fernie.

I was not alone in my race. I made friends with Art Frank and he and I took turns leading each other through the course. At one point he asked me about my favourite race distance, and as I answered, I realized that this was it. 8km of Calgary XC. Oh yeah. I loved every minute of it.

Towards the end I developed a chant that helped me to keep focused on moving forwards. ROOTS and rocks and LEAVES and mud, ROOTS and rocks and LEAVES and mud… When the going got tough I thought of Penguin Buddy Ellie, who was doing her first Ironman Triathlon at the same time. I remembered that “I can quit later”, sent her some good vibes, and pressed on.

Through the whole race there was a runner who stayed just ahead of us. We saw glimpses of her black vest on some of the straighter stretches, and towards the end we got closer and closer to her. I zipped through the zig zags as fast as I could muster, and my breathing got harder and harder. She still managed to stay ahead of me on the downhills, but in the second last up hill below the finish I caught up. She and a couple of other women were walking up and I debated whether to try passing or not. I was sucking wind just to walk behind them, but I resolved that as soon as we turned the corner I was going to sprint up the finishing wall and beat them.

I did. They didn’t challenge me, but I ran as if they were. Soccer Boy took a video of my glorious finish and Little Runner gave me a big hug. WooHOO! 53 minutes of lung busting, bone jarring, arm pumping, creek leaping entertainment, and we hadn’t even got to the food yet.

We cheered in other runners and then retired to the Waldorf school for steaming bowls of soup, buttered buns and pot luck dessert. I won a Lycra winter hat for a door prize and am looking forward to trying it out as the weather gets colder.

Hopefully I’ll have time to put up some pictures later. I have a few muscles making themselves known today, all over my body, but it was definitely worth it. I can’t wait for the next race in the series – Confederation Park relay on October 23. Time to set up teams eh?