Buntzen 5Peaks Trail Race

Getting up at 6 am to the sound of pouring rain is not the way I wanted to start a double race weekend. Part of me was tempted to throw the blankets over my head and roll back over, but I know better.

I got up, got dressed and stumbled around while attempting to wake up before hitting the road and heading to Buntzen Lake for my first ever trail race. The nerves were hitting me pretty hard for some reason, more so than any other race.

My phone had a bunch of “good luck” tweets and messages from some pretty damn amazing people so I figured it wouldn’t be that bad, right?

I got to Buntzen and met up with Solana, and a few other familiar faces from our Ladies of the Trails Tuesday running group.

It was raining pretty hard and I was not prepared clothes wise so I knew it would be a chilly post race, but knew the run itself would feel great.

Waiting to head out onto the course.

I had more or less a good idea of where I was going between doing the Diez Vista course a few weeks ago and having run once with a friend of mine a month back. So when our wave went out, I just let myself go with it. I knew there would be some hills, and that walking them would be fine, and I knew I would hit some downhill and there was a chance it was going to be slick.

I ran alone, pacing myself with a few others but more or less just letting myself set my own pace and make this my race. Some people passed me, and I passed some people, which was really cool. Trail racer etiquette is so much nicer than that of most road runners, I loved it!!!

I stopped and took advantage of the somewhat cloudy view from the top of the sport course

I even had a fellow runner stop and take a picture of me too!!! I hit the bottom of the trail, crossed over the suspension bridge and knew it was about 3.5k to the finish line. I felt good, so I just kept on rolling.

The biggest thing I noticed about this run is how incredible I felt going downhill. I didn’t stress over it, I didn’t try to hold myself back and I put my confidence in my body to do what it needed to do. Which was also some fantastic advice from Solana at Diez Vista a few weeks back.

I felt amazing when I crossed the line. My garmin said my time was under 1:30 and that is all I cared about. I ran to my car, got into some dry-ish clothes waited for a few others to finish and suck around for the sport course awards. I did pick up a kick ass 5 Peaks beanie which I love, and grabbed a can of Cariboo Root Beer.

Overall, I can’t begin to describe how much I am loving the whole trail running atmosphere. It’s definitely my new crack, which isn’t a bad thing 🙂

Now to soak, relax and get ready for race #2 tomorrow, Surrey Half Marathon