Campbell Valley 10k Trail Race

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Just over a week ago I headed out to Campbell Valley for my first trail race in over 3 years! I wasn't exactly thrilled about it doing a race when the weather had been so hot but it was $5 and you really can't beat that as far as a race registration goes. Besides I had to fit my weekly 10k in anyway for marathon training.

I was very impressed with the turnout at this race, for such a small weekday race there seemed to be a lot of runners out. We even ran into a bunch of other runners from our local run club:

 

I feel pretty lucky to be part of such a friendly community of runners. I'm hoping that even though we are moving I will still get to come and run with these guys.

 

Before long it was time for Nikki and I to get started on another race together!



We started out on a "packed" gravel trail. I put it in quotations because it was pretty loose gravel and very dusty with some horse droppings mixed in for good measure. For the first 10 minutes I was desperately hoping it would get less dusty and as soon as the crowd spread out a bit the trail seemed to get a lot nicer. It was a very hot evening but thankfully the trail was about 75% shade. We saw quite a few horses along the way and that was a first for me during a race. I wasn't exactly sure of the horse protocol so we tried to warn the riders we were coming up and asked if it was okay to run by or not. At about 4km we hit a nasty hill and because I decided I wasn't killing myself during this race or rather "training run" we ran about halfway up and then walked the rest of the way. Once we got to the top of the hill I was certainly relieved and I hoped that we weren't going to encounter too many more. For the most part the rest of the trail was pretty normal with rolling hills and even some stairs thrown in.

I admit that I was dragging at the end and feeling hot and tired but still happy to have made it out for the race. We came in at about 1:14 which is definitely not a speedy 10k for me but pretty much what I planned to do in the middle of training. I was especially grateful that there were free timbits at the end of the race! All in all a great Thursday night run!