I ran the Georgia XTERRA Georgia Trail Run Series at Bull Mountain yesterday and I’m hurtbox today. What is a hurtbox? I’m not sure, but I do know I feel worse today than I ever have post run. I finished 13th out of about 200 runners. I’m fine with that given all things considered. I held on to 7th place until about mile 10 when I just didn’t have any more juice. I learned a lot from running this half marathon through the mountains of North Georgia. I learned that I was right, I can run a half marathon any day, at any time, without training. I wasn’t running this race to test my hypothesis, but injury had sidelined me from training for about 6 months and no running at all for the past two weeks, but I really wanted to do this race. I learned that I can get cramps while racing. I learned that I should probably look at the elevation of a Trail Race before running it. I learned that if you haven’t been training, you probably shouldn’t start a race at your normal race pace. I learned it’s OK to be beaten by a girl, even if you have to ride 2 hours back home with her. I learned that moving up to the 30-34 year old age group may not be easier competition, especially when your biggest competitors move up in age groups too. I learned that I probably shouldn’t push an injury (again), and learned ice baths feel great. I also learned you can’t push it up hills when they are longer than two miles. I’ll save all of these lessons for later blogs, what I want to focus on today is that I learned it is OK to walk during a race.
There is something mental about walking that I haven’t been able to get over. I’ve always had too much foolish pride to walk during a run. I haven’t walked during a run since 7th grade track practice in Middle School. At that time I was one of the two fastest runners on the team and during practice we would go out hard and walk at points when needed. We were so far ahead of everyone else, no one ever caught up and we still finished every practice well ahead of the rest of the team. However, my best friend during the Middle School days, who was a girl, would complain, “You may have beaten me but at least I ran the whole way!” Why are females always trying to compete with me? It’s not me, it’s just science. At any rate, yesterday was the first time I have walked during a run in 16 years and I liked it.
It began with a muddy, slippery, 75% grade incline at about mile 5, after I had been running uphill for almost all 5 miles prior. I found that with an incline this steep a fast walk can often be faster than a run. I leaned forward and put a brisk walk up the steep hill. While I was walking I was breathing very heavy and becoming more fatigued, but walking was working different muscles in my legs. I was saving my running muscles which I needed for the downhills. By walking up some of the steepest hills I was able to conserve enough energy to be able to move my legs at the maximum pace the downhills pushed me. Without walking up the steep hills I would not have been able to finish the race in the place that I did.
Walking also took the pressure off of my injured knee. My knee began hurting badly at about mile 8. Every time I started running up a small incline it would twinge at each step, but when walking it wasn’t putting this pressure on them. Walking takes the constant pounding off of your knees. Jeff Galloway has built marathon training plans from the run-walk-run method which has been very effective for thousands of runners. He’s still running strong at age 65 and claims you can keep running until your 100 years old by using this method. That’s great news for me since my knees feel like they are 100 years old from all the jumping out of airplanes I’ve done. Maybe it is OK to walk. Without a doubt, it helped me perform the best to my ability in this race.
Overall, I had a great time at the XTERRA Georgia Trail Race. The race was very well put on and run smoothly like all of the XTERRA Georgia Trail Races, everyone really enjoyed themselves from new trail runners to experienced trail runners. And as you can see from the picture above, every runner needed a good ice bath to soothe their muscles after running this challenging, mountainous race. Beautiful day, beautiful terrain, beautiful race. This is what trail running is all about….and trail walking.
[…] singletrack, and windy like a trail run should be, but no too difficult that you find yourself forced to walk or slow down. This is the first year that a full marathon trail race is being offered at the […]