WWC Brew Dash 12k

Backing out of my garage, I had to turn on my heads lights. The sun is taking its own sweet time pushing over the horizon these days. That’s one of the things that I miss about summer. The sun gets up before I do. 

 

This morning, I was headed to the WWC for their Brew Dash 12k. I am looking for every opportunity to shake off 6 months of rust.

 

The dispersed start opens the course at 8 AM. I was going to arrive a little after 7 so I could get in a few miles to warm up.

 

I throw on an extra shirt to combat the colder morning temperature and headed off. I circled the channel and attempted to drop down in to the trails. Oh, while the leaves are falling, they have not fallen enough to allow the morning light to touch the trail.

 

Choosing wisdom over desire, I slipped off the trail section and on to the gravel sections of the WWC. Next time, I will bring my head lamp.    

 

Walking up to the starting line, only a couple of runners were present. Perhaps the cold weather had people delaying their dispersed start time to a warmer one.

 

I turned round, clicked my Garmin to sync up, and took a deep breathe. I heard my Garmin chime, and I knew that it was time for me to go.

 

From the Pavilion, I rounded the channel and dropped down in the Figure 8 trail. A lot of leaves had fallen over the past few days. This kept my eyes glued to the trail ahead.

 

Off of Figure 8, I headed on to North Main. My breathing was labored and my legs felt heavy. The sun was up now, and the trails were much better lite.

 

I felt like I was doing well. But this is really hard to judge running solo. I could still feel the sting of the cold on my hands while sweat was dripping from brow. This is a strange sensation to be both hot and cold at the time same time. I passed a couple of runners in this section of the course. I thought that I was one of the first runners to head off. I guess not. 

North Main seem to fly by and before I knew it; I was on to the South Main trail. South Main is favorite of mine, and I was hoping my legs would help me make up any lost time. That thought was quickly forgotten when I took a hard left on to Carpet. Carpet always seems to kick my rear. I think that it did so today.

 

I was really happy to make the left off of Carpet and back on to the South Main. From here I had roughly two and half miles to run.

 

Mentally, I was urging my legs to turnover faster. I was even trying to encourage them by pumping my arms. This usually works. But today, my legs were having none of it.

 

They carried me along on South Main back to the channel where I turned right to head back to the Pavilion.

 

I crossed the finish line and kept walking. I needed to move away until my breathing returned to normal because it was labored. It was really labored.

 

I ran 65 minutes and 27 seconds. I thought that I could run a little closer to 61 minutes but this was all that I could muster today.

 

Hopefully, this took a little more rust off. I have several more races on my calendar for this year. If nothing else, this will set me up for a better ’21. Here’s hoping that ’21 is better for all of us.

 

The Cool Down Runner