Bighorn Sheep Shuffle

I love local races. That's one thing I really miss from the Seattle area was having plenty of trail races close to home. This weekend I was able to pop into a 7.5 mile race at Tom Mays State Park just 20 min from my house. It was a mix of road, steep technical trail and singletrack.

I had a rough couple days heading into this race with some kind of head cold or terrible allergies. Not sure which, but I was hoping to be feeling okay enough to race. I figured I would show up and get started, drop if I had to, or just cruise and take it easy. Thankfully, I felt fine other than a little nausea in the first couple miles. It was a small race, around 100 people for both the 4.5 and 7.5 mile races.

It was a pretty low key event. After some debate as to which direction we were going to start, we followed a lead car around a small loop then headed down the park road. One dude took off ahead of everyone else with a pack of 4 of us following not too far behind. My plan was to put in a nice half marathon tempo type effort, and push the last two miles if I was feeling good depending on where I was in the race.

As we turned off the road, and onto some single track things tightened up some. I was in 5th place and feeling very comfortable. We soon passed the guy that went out hard as we rolled through a twisty little loop. As we turned and started heading back up the hill the new 1st place began pulling away and I moved into 2nd right before we hit the only steep major climb of the race. Another guy passed me for a few minutes, but as we began to hike and scramble up the mountain, I moved back into 2nd. I could hear a few others huffing and puffing behind me, I looked back once to get a gauge on them and see if I wanted to press a little more. I could see I was pulling away slowly and still feeling comfortable, so I just held steady. Meanwhile, 1st place was putting some solid time into me.

It's a tough scramble up the ridge on rocky technical terrain with a little up and down before a steep decent back onto some single track. By the time we were off the ridge I was comfortably in 2nd, 1st was out of reach, and I felt like I could push a little more and still have plenty left in case someone pulled up on me. All in all, the race was going exactly as I had hoped. We weaved our way down to another turnaround. There was a young kid close behind me at that point. It was my first time seeing or hearing him, but I kinda knew someone was probably around 30sec back. He looked like he was pushing hard, so I decided to crank it up a little and keep him from closing the gap as we made the gradual climb back towards the finish line. Ultimately, I held him off and kept my 2nd place.

Overall, happy with how my body is feeling. I've put a lot of time in the weight room lately working on my muscular imbalances and stability. I've also got back to some speed work on the roads, and I think the combo has paid off quite a bit. I feel strong, and much more solid mechanically.

The race was a lot of run, and I'm happy to see a nice trail community coming together in El Paso. Looking forward to seeing things continue to develop here.