Paine to Pain--#3/5

My running group puts on a trail half marathon called the Paine to Pain every year (since its inception 7 years ago).  Thomas Paine was apparently a historical figure, and since there is a lot of old colonial stuff to go along with it, including the name of the trails and the medal, I am thinking he was important in Colonial times.  I had always planned on including this half in my 5 for the year, and didn't really put much credit into the fact that it was a trail run.

Big mistake.

Fortunately they do a "preview run" about 2 weeks before the race.  I decided to run about 9 of it, and was hurting the whole way.  I thought it was mostly due to the race I did the day before in very hot and humid weather.  But was definitely sore in areas I wasn't used to being sore, plus I fell and scuffed up my elbow for the second time.  Ripped the old scab right off.  Ellie said "my blood" was worse than the initial fall.  Overall though, I did start to realize that this run was going to be tougher than I thought.

The starting line was small as only about 562 people finished the race.  However, trail runners are a bit of a different breed.  I was sort of afraid I might get beat up at some point on the race.  My friend Laura who is also in NewRo decided at the last minute to run the race with me too.  And thank god.  She says that I pushed her and I say that I couldn't have finished without her.  This was definitely one of the hardest runs that I have done in a long time.  The terrain was very difficult and very hilly.  My left leg cramped up like you couldn't believe and I almost face planted a rock at 11.5 miles.  I was definitely in my "if I pushed a baby out for 3 hours I can do this" mode.

We schooled it though!  We came in 5th and 6th overall for women and 1 and 2 for our age group.  They technically gave Laura first although our chip times were identical ;)  1:48:05.

I barely could walk for the following week and am going to lose two toe nails over this race though.

Ellie took pics while they were waiting for Mommy

Very serious searching going on here

Me and Laura!  This was about mile 10.  I was happy they were here to cheer for me because I was not feeling it.

Coming around the track to the finish line.  Ellie ran next to us for a while.

Almost there..

We were waiting forever for the awards ceremony so we decided to take a pic sharing the number 1 mug.  Somehow that gave them the hint to get the ceremony going.

I've never won a prize before!

I got a stein.