Spokane River Run 25K

Instead of running our 16 mile long run along the Fish Lake Trail, Andrea and I decided to sign up for the Spokane River Run. Sarah, Bethany, and Ashley ran their 16 miler the today before along the trail. Anway, the River Run is a 25K trail run throughout Riverside State Park. Unfortunately, we both opted not to run with our cell phones, so we were unable to take pictures of some breath taking views. However thanks to Google, I was able to find some images of the park we ran through today. It was perfect running weather (in the 50's), full of sunshine and a gentle breeze.



However nothing could have mentally prepared us for what the route really was like! We both agreed that running this 15.5 trail route was waaaaayyyy more difficult than last week's 22 miler! It was both physically and mentally exhausting. There were some killer hills, uneven terrains, giant mud puddles to avoid, and large rocks we had to hurdle over as we made our way through the challenging course.

Here is the course profile and as you can tell we were constantly going up and down hills throughout the course. We thought maybe we could recover with the down hills, but because of the steep grade and slippery rocks, we had to physically and mentally think about foot placement, stride length, and pace speed.

Often the "trail" was full of rocks

Although it was a difficult course, the time did fly by! We were grateful the course was clearly marked, and there was many water and nutrition stations, almost every 2-3 miles. Thank goodness for all those wonderful volunteers. Sadly, though, we did witness many people lose their footing, trip, and even one young lady fall down onto her knees. We checked on her and luckily she was okay. She ended up finishing the course without further injury but did confess to us that her knees were pretty sore towards the end.
 
Despite the varied terrain, I felt Andrea and I ran a good, hard race. We managed to maintain about an 11 minute/mile pace, depite the fact that we had to walk a few of the hills. It definitely was not conversation pace and often we had to run behind one another since the trail was not wide enough to run side by side. My overall time was 2:50:54 and Andrea's overall time was 2:53:58. We were exhausted when we finally reached the finish line, but proud to have completed the course. It was also a wonderful suprise to see Bethany and her cute son, Bryson, waiting for us at the end. Thanks for the encouragement B!!!

Anyway, I'm sure we'll be pretty sore tomorrow; trail running is definitely different than road running! However, this race made me even more confident that we will do great at our upcoming marathon! Thanks for a great run today Andrea! Marathon or Bust!

Mirna and Andrea

-posted by Mirna