Ridgeline Ramble Race Re-cap

*This post is a little over-due. I wrote it once, accidentally deleted half of it, and decided to punish it by leaving it in the draft file by itself for two-weeks. Now I'm back to finish what I started.


I had this great idea about a month ago. I should have learned by now that most of my great ideas really aren't.
I saw this inaugural trail marathon advertised on a race site. I shouldn't have given it a second thought. But I did. I gave it a second thought and a third thought and a fourth thought. Then I signed myself up.
Typically, signing up for a race is pretty well within the norm of my crazy running habit. The problem with this registration was that the marathon was six days after the half marathon that I was actually training for. I didn't have time to train for a marathon, but figured my half marathon training would carry me through. I checked and re-checked the site. It said there was just over 900 feet in elevation gain. My plan was to take it easy and to run it as a "fun" sort of trail/training run, but I had no intention of actually trying to race it.
About three days before the event, the race director e-mailed the 24 of us who were brave enough, in his words, to sign up. I started thinking, "Brave? Why are we brave? Isn't this just a nice little trail run?" I continued reading the e-mail and stopped at phrases like "If it were easy, everyone would do it," and "should search and rescue need to find you..." I went back to the website trying to see what I was missing. I couldn't find any reason to worry, but nonetheless, I had a full 24 hours worth of anxiety stomach leading up to race day.
I woke up a little before 5:00 to the sound of rain. It rained on my way to Eugene. It rained on the starting line. At some point the rain stopped, but then it started again. The race started at 7:00AM. It took about three miles to realize this was not going to be a nice little joy run. In three miles, we had already made 900 feet of elevation gain, and we were still climbing. In fact, we would end up climbing over 4100ft. In addition to the climb, the trail markers were a little fuzzy. We were supposed to follow the arrows backwards as 20k racers were going point to point and we were going out and back. This also meant that we met about 100 racers on the single track trails going in the opposite direction of us. Besides a few people getting mildly lost, and all of us getting filthy dirty, it was an entertaining experience. I ran with a guy who was racing the marathon distance for the first time. His name was Dave Johnson. He's about the 4th Dave Johnson I've met. He passed me on almost every downhill, and I passed him on almost every up hill. It started to become kind of a joke. In the end, I was the 3rd female and 7th finisher. I'm glad I did it, but I don't think I'd ever do it to race it. If I sign up next year, it'll be another chance at a "fun trail run." And that's my story.