2009 Philosopher's Way 15K Trail Run

Shannon proudly displays her "Trail Love"

I love trail races, so I signed for both the Philosopher's Way 15K and the Bobbie Boney 10 miler the same weekend. I also like to go to First Friday in Raleigh, so the Friday night before we headed downtown and ate at the Remedy Diner. There is some really bad art on these "Art Walks" so I usually have a few beers to help me tolerate it, but I think I had a few too many PBRs at the diner. At $1.50 each, it's hard to resist. I had drank the night before the my 10K PR so I figured it wouldn't hurt me for the race the next morning.

World famous drummer
Taylor Traversari of the band
Airiel Down, with his girlfriend.
Both ran the 15K

The Philosopher's Way is put on by the TrailHeads in Chapel Hill. We drove out there Saturday morning, and I was feeling a little hung over, and I didn't really get a chance to warm up.

Once again, I took off way too fast at the start, racing down a gravel road and onto the trail in the lead. Right there I tweaked my left hamstring, probably because I didn't warm up. It hurt, but it didn't effect my stride so I kept going. The trail was mostly flat, but with an endless series of switchbacks, so it seemed you never took more than 5 steps in a straight line. It was a lot of fun zig-zagging back and forth, but hard to gage the pace, and I wore out pretty quickly. The eventual winner Patrick caught up to me after about 25 minutes, and after some smalltalk I let him pass. A few minutes after another guy passed me I was suddenly struck down by a vicious side cramp.

For at least a minute I was doubled over in pain, unable to even walk. I guess the beer finally caught up with me. I was waiting for someone to run by and ask me what was wrong, so I could say "PBR", but amazingly there was no one in sight and no one else passed me. The cramp went away as quickly as it came and I managed to finish pretty strong, in third place overall.

Shannon had a bad race. She fell and got some "Trail Love" and also turned her ankle. She still managed to finish 4th female. When she finished she was bleeding and covered with dirt. I tried to clean her off, but she said "No, leave it. I want to win the Trail Love award." But we decided to leave before the awards were handed out.

Overall it was a good race, and I will be there next year, minus the PBR hangover.

I shamelessly stole these great photos from someone named "EvilKatz" on smugmug.com. Shannon finished the race despite suffering a bad fall and a twisted ankle early on. I ran with my shirt off, so I had to censor that photo. Wouldn't want to excite anyone with my amazing breasts