Uwharrie 20!!

Second time doing this distance at this event! 💪 Early morning start via a carpool with Raheleh Ghasseminia and Danica ☕🌌🚗 Met up with Tracy, Laurin and Jess at the start, and saw Steph and others! The start is always a mess as we all cram into the singletrack, jockey for position, and head straight up a big climb. I filed in pretty much at the back of the line to keep things easy with Raheleh, Tracy, Laurin, and Jess. One big hill climb over a mile later and then it was time to play. I pushed it a bit on some of the descents, but fell into a power hike for every climb and even most of the flats 😄 The goal was to have a good training run to build for spring races, manage effort, and try to keep an even pace throughout the whole race, and still run fast/strong on downhills at the end. Overall that worked out well! I might have alarmed a few people on the downhill stretches though - apologies! It was great seeing Holly and Emily doing the 40 as I was coming in to the finish! I always love seeing the runners from the other distance when we have some overlap 💛 Thanks to Brian for slipping me some of that rice cake food magic -- he slipped it into my hand at the mile 8 aid station like we were doing a drug deal, taking the phrase "food doping" to a whole level 😂 Speaking of which, thanks to the aid station volunteer at mile 14 who welcomed me with a "welcome to mile 14, sunshine!" and didn't bat an eye when I asked him to fish out a Ziploc of white powder from my pack (it was Skratch. Not coke. I promise.) Mile 17 always sucks, ughhhhhh. I asked Raheleh after the race how she liked mile 17 and she was like, "You did NOT tell me about this beforehand! I feel like you purposely did that!" To which I laughed and told her I purposely didn't remind MYSELF of mile 17 going in 🤣 Thinking about it...mile 17 could be one factor in why I only do this race every OTHER year (and volunteer the off year) 😂 No music on this run, just enjoyed being outside and occasionally chatting with people. I practiced my Italian a bit -- I've been working on Italian with the hopes of some rad hiking in the Dolomites soon -- and random words and phrases kept getting stuck in my head. "Lo scontrino" (the receipt) was the dominant word of the day; it just sort of bounced around my head randomly. I kinda think I was manifesting putting miles "in the bank" and printing out long receipts this whole run 😂 I also played a drinking game with myself -- whenever the word "l'acqua" (water) or "la bevanda" (beverage) popped into my head I had to drink from my flasks. This was good, because I haven't been training well with nutrition leading up to this (okay, okay, I haven't been TRAINING WELL period, lol) and I was struggling to regularly take in water, salt, and food, so the drinking game was to my advantage. Wow, doping and drinking games...where is this coming from?! 😂🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️ It was cool weather (cold to start), but honestly some of the best weather I've seen for Uwharrie 🤩 And as always it was so much fun seeing friends tackle all sorts of distances and volunteering at aid stations! Huge congrats to everyone!!!! And I'll see you again next year 💛