Lord Hill was my fourth trail run last season and became my fourth trail run this season too though this year it was only the 10k for me and not the half, plus I was more prepared on the footwear front.   This was going to be my first run in months not in Lunas, I knew wearing the sandals could potentially be dangerous in a few spots on this trail so I laced up my Inov-8 BareGrip 200s which gave me all the traction I needed.   After finishing I realized that aside from one section I probably would have been fine with the Lunas.

I showed up on the overcast morning at about 7:30 to do registration but got moved to parking duty and spent an hour and a half directing cars before getting ready to run.   The course was pretty much as I remembered it, a fast start followed by a bottleneck at the first creek then a  steep climb up single track where I passed a lot of the too-fast starters.   The second creek crossing was pretty precarious and caused a another small back-up even though runners had started to spread out a bit.   After a bit we broke off the single track on to the road where I had to stop once for a pair of horses before continuing onward and upward to the turn around point.  At the aid station I said “Hi” to Jamey and Heather, topped off my bottle and headed down, glad I only had to do that hill once in the 10k route.  The ups and downs in the meadow were right where I remembered them and the final steep downhill pitch back to the road to the finish was indeed slippery and steep but the Baregrips keep me firmly on the trail.

Crossed the finish in 1:04, just under a 10 minute mile pace and the fastest I’ve run of the last few events I’ve done.  My knee felt good which was huge, I hadn’t run anything this steep in over five months and wasn’t sure how that was going to feel.   Next up, a weeknight run on Tuesday at Grand Ridge, I figured I had to run 5-miles that day anyway so I might as well do it at the event.