Saturday it was back to Lake Perry and the Rock Creek Trail Series. The weather was just perfect, with a cold start and a warm 60 degrees at mid day with a light north breeze. The trail was extra beautiful with the leaves turning colors and falling to the ground. There was very little mud even though it had rained quite a bit in the week prior. I didn't hardly walk at all other than up the steep hills. It definitely felt like I ran just the right race. I had a fun pack of older (I hope they don't read this blog, but mid to late 40s isn't "old", just way older than me! and it must say something about my slow pace when I end up consistently running in multiple races with the same pack of masters women!) women following my pace from the beggining so we ran together with me as the lead guy. By the end, it was only Debbie Webster (48) from near Kansas City, who could keep up. Oh, and I met another guy named Roy, I think, who has run 256 marathons and ultras and had plans on running another 50K the next day just a couple hours away. Now that's crazy!
I finished the 50K (31 miles) in 6:29:27, which averages out to slightly less than 12:30 miles. I've heard that in ultrarunning, a 12 minute mile is fairly respectable (maybe the equivalent of a 9-minute road mile or something?), so I'm almost there. It was my PR for the 50K by 37 minutes (Flatrock 07, 7:06). I finished 20th out of 39 finishers and 3rd in my age division of 20-29. Well, okay, there were only three of us anyway.
Allen Smelser finished too in 7:25, so we both feel trained, ready, and pumped for Monday's 100 mile Run for Missions.
Check out these great pictures of the event, thanks to Gary Henry and ultrastory.com:
http://ultrastory.com/Rock_creek_08_photos.htm
