Today was the 3rd Annual Born to Run event at Soaring Eagle put on by Evergreen Trail Runs.   This run seems to always happen for me either right after a really long event or when I’m injured so even though they have distances up to 50k I’ve always ended up doing the shortest route possible which was 10k three years ago and 5-miles last year and this year.   I also always do this run in my Luna Leadville sandals even though the place is a mud hole.  I was hoping that all the work they did on the pipeline trail would make things less mucky this year, a few weeks ago it looked pretty good, but it was still pretty slippery and nasty in places.  At least two crazy people did the event barefoot and I saw one other guy in Lunas plus a few in VFFs, Inov-8s and other minimal shoes.

This was to be only my second 5-mile run since the hamstring injury which has had me mostly sidelined for the past 11 weeks.   I finally got one in a week ago at the Watershed and decided to do pretty much the same thing to prep for this one – a 20+ mile bike ride yesterday, KTTape on the hamstring and a good leg/squat workout before running to get everything warmed up and stable.   I got to the park early and did a bit of course monitoring and photography for the first small 1.1 mile loop of the marathoners and 50k runners before dropping off my camera and getting ready to run.

The event was packed this year with over 400 people participating.  The 5-mile had 125 entrants and luckily started a 15 minutes after the 10-milers so we didn’t have a 300+ person start happening.  I knew that I was going to take it slow so I started mid-pack and figured I’d get passed a lot on the pipeline, pass a few slower people and end up not stuck in a big conga line on the single track.  The plan worked perfectly.   When I got to the single track and passed just two people I was in a wide open space where I could maintain my 10-min mile pace without having people breathing down my back or running up on way slower runners and needing to pass.  I did pass a few people as the course went on, one guy running totally barefoot even, but for the most part had a lot of space around me.

Off the single track I picked up the pace a bit on the grade down to the turn-around and then kept it going up the hill on the pipeline trail, passing a few people on the way back to the finish area.   I figured I’d get a bit of 9:30-ish run in while the trail was good because I knew that the last 1/4 mile was muck and I’d have to slow down a bit through that.  Hit the finish at 49:39. Finished last in age group but geez, it was a fast group of 50 year old guys, and 44/125 overall.  Not my slowest 5-mile but way off my fastest time of 42:05 earlier this year at Bridle Trails.   But heck, last year I did the same course in 53:49 and 46:03 so sort of split the difference between my times of 2012 which, given the injury, was not bad.  Hamstring felt good throughout the run, we’ll see how it feels tomorrow.   Next up, I have no idea.  I had hoped to run the half (well I had really hoped to be running the 50k again) at Echo Valley but we’ll see how the leg is doing over the next three weeks.