Cahaba River Ramblin'!

Yesterday I ran the Cahaba River Ramble 10 mile trail race. It was a GREAT race!! Although the Cahaba River Lillies were covered by the high river water, the scenery during the race was still magnificent. The weather was perfect--not too hot, and thankfully not too cold since two of the creek crossings the water came to my armpits!! (If you look closely at the pic of me finishing, you can see my soaked clothes.) I really do love this race. The terrain is varied; you run on gravel, sand, leaves, pine needles, muddy clay, and good-ol' dirt and roots. The race has two very significant hills, plus several smaller, rolling ones. The first hill is probably about a mile long and is pretty steep. The last hill is near the end and is called "The Great Equalizer." A pick-ax would come in handy on this one. You basically can't run up the whole thing. I finished in 1:23:04, a 7:30 improvement over my time last year!! I came in third place among the women.
Another bonus of this race is the great prizes. I think I mentioned the sweet jacket I got last year. Well, this year I won a Northface backpack, an Outdoor Research fleece jacket, a frisbee, and a bag of coffee (which I don't drink, but it does smell good :)).

My lil' sis Hannah came down to the race and did the 5k. She said she really enjoyed it. Most everyone at this race had a cool, granola look to them, which made us feel extra-hip just to be there. She pointed out that the lighting in the picture of the two of us makes our chins look a little Lady Elaine Fairchild-ish.

I haven't recorded my workouts since early last week, so here is a re-cap. On Tuesday I ran 6 miles in 45 minutes. This was a tempo day, so that middle 3-4 miles I must have been doing around a 7-minute pace, b/c I definitely started and ended a little slower. Wednesday I biked for 45 minutes. Thursday I ran 35 minutes at an easy pace. Friday I did nuttin'.
I canceled our meet Thursday because of rain. As it turned out, the rain actually mostly quit by 5, but I had to make a call, and at 2pm the forecast was still calling for thunderstorms through 8pm. I wasn't too disappointed--I was pretty tired that day.