Why? Because I like pain?

It was all a spur of the moment thing. I heard about the race one day before it began. I signed up that night and drove to go coach a basketball game. I got home at 10:30pm and at 6:00am I was up and driving to the forset.

Little did I know it had snowed in the middle of the night.

So I showed up to the course, freezing. When it dawned on me, "I haven't run in a month." This is not something you want to be thinking about before running a 15 mile trail run with the words "Lovin' the Hills" are in the name, especially when the course was covered in snow and ice.

I was there though and I met my old high school coach. We jogged a bit to keep from freezing and made it to the start line. The gun was raised and we took off. We ran together for most of the race, somehow finding ourselves in third and fourth place.

Then we hit ice mountain. I call it ice mountain because to the left was a pretty steep drop and on the path was pure ice... at a 30 degree angle. My coach was smart and decided to not risk death. The race itself was risking death to me so I charged ahead. I noticed someone had fallen in front of me due to the footprints. I promptly fell too. I left some blood on the ice to warn my coach.

Everything was going amazingly well until one mile to go. It was then that I got hopelessly lost. After going along the 50K course (crazy bastards) for about a half mile, I was told to head back. I ended up in 7th. Granted third place averaged 9:40 miles and I officially averaged 10:00 miles, so it isn't like we were speed demons.

I couldn't walk the next day and it took me four days to be warm again, but it was sure worth it to know ... ok no. It was one of the dumbest things I have ever done running wise.

Not the dumbest (see this coming Friday for the full list), but it sure as hell wasn't smart.