I have done the Florida Challenge several times so when I saw the race come on the calendar I signed up right away. Who wouldn't want to run a 13.1 trail race? Not this guy.
Up super early and off to Alafia River State Park.
Its not a short drive but not that long. 5:30am and on the road.
Got there early enough to snap a couple of pictures of me getting ready to run because I am goofy like that.
I've done the race before so I knew what to expect course wise. At the start I took a picture of the course map. Yep...lots of twists and turns and sure enough it looks to be all of 13.1 miles. No major changes from years past.
Every time I run this race I use the same strategy. I go out slow and pick people off as the race goes on. I also count how many are in front of me so that I can know how close I am to my goal.
Every year the goal is top 3 overall. Entering the trails this year I was in 9th.
Trail runs are hard on the body. At the speed we are running people are bound to fall or twist and ankle. Every year I pass people in the first few miles that have those issues. This year there were 2.
3 miles in I was feeling good and in 7th place.
Around mile 5 I caught and past some guy with headphones that were way to big for him and I was in 6th.
I stayed in 6th for a couple of miles until I came up a hill and found a long straight stretch of grass. To my surprise I saw 2 guys running in front of me. Yellow shirt and red shirt were 15-20 second up the course.
As the grass straightaway continued yellow shirt stayed in front of red shirt but I got closer and closer till when we went back into the trail I was only 10 yards behind red shirt.
At the first steep downhill I almost ran into red shirt. On the next down hill I pasted him. On the next up hills the same thing happened with yellow shirt. I passed him also and was in 3rd place around mile 8. I surged for a few minutes and found myself all alone in 3rd place running comfortably. Yellow shirt was running steady and red shirt discovered he was in over his head and fell way back.
3rd place was mine if I wanted it badly enough.
The passing of 3rd and 4th had really hurt me. I had 5 miles to run and I was suffering quite a bit. All I needed to do was get to mile 10 to get my Pro20 and then the last few miles known as the roller coaster.
Wow was I happy to see Teresa.
This picture I think was a result of her being bored. She usually doesn't do selfies; that is my area of expertise.
Pro20 in the body and it's off to the roller coaster. I guess I fell asleep a little bit because all of a sudden yellow shirt and some dude that I hadn't seen before caught me.
Yeah...not going to happen. I literally sprinted for about 3 minutes and demoralized my chasers.
I finished 3rd.
I won this cool trophy for being the first master.
I'm not sure how accurate the splits were from my Strava. iPhones are notorious for being a bit off. Here are it the course according to my phone and the splits.
Did you see mile 11? Why would that mile be so quick compared to 9, 10 and 12?
So how did I do it? How did I run so well only running 10-20 miles per week? Honestly it was what I put into my body that allowed me to get so much out of my body. If you are a running and want learn how you can get the most out of you body invest 3 minutes in watching this video.
Who do you know that is a runner and wants to improve?
We can help them in 2 ways. We offer coaching and we offer nutritional supplements. My performance on Saturday proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Advocare WORKS!
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