Tartan Terrible 2015

This is a fun 4.3-mile evening race, advertised as "A non-certified, non-boring, non-conforming, non-exact 4 mile run over grass, sand and asphalt...and through water, weeds and mud."  I just love this race!  It's two loops, mostly on grass or dirt, mostly along the edges of a non-flat golf course.  Definitely non-boring.  Indeed there is a water hazard as well, a bit of a swamp in fact, and this year the water was calf-high if you stayed to the right on the "path" through the weeds, otherwise if you slid to the left, anything in your shorts pockets was at risk!

With a marathon coming up I mostly walked, but ran some of it, probably more than I should have,

At the Start

considering the risk of injury.  Nevertheless I got away with it, nothing hurts, I had a great time.  I do this race every year and this was certainly my slowest, but I was careful and finished in about 57 minutes I think.  (I forgot to click my watch at the finish and results aren't up yet.)  The first loop took 30:31, but I ran a lot more of the time in the second.  If 57 is close, then I did the 4.3 miles at a pace of about 13:15, faster than I have been training for the upcoming marathon.

I had decided NOT to run, just walk, but that's very hard to do when there are runners just ahead.  Inevitably, in the last half of the race, I start to catch up to some runners who went out too fast.  That's fun - I just have to pass them!.  This year I was concerned about finishing last, but other people took care of that for me.

Shoes, sox, shorts, & shirt went right in the wash, Don went in the shower, now all cleaned up.