2.1.09 Mission Gorge Trail Run

Last year I did the Wildflower Triathlon through Team In Training and in the course of the first few days I realized that triathlons were definitely for me. I quickly went from 1 triathlon to 4 including 2 off-road tri’s. Being a mountain biker I loved the off-road aspect and the challenges it added, I was hooked.

I have set a goal for myself this year to qualify for the XTERRA US Championship’s in Ogden Utah on September 27th. To do this I have set up a pretty strict training schedule as well as a ton of races. My Race schedule this year looks like this:

2.1.09 – Mission Gorge 15k Trail Run (San Diego, CA)

3.29.09 – XTERRA REAL (Folsom Lake, CA)

4.05.09 – Renegade Off Road Triathlon (San Dimas, CA)

5.02.09 – XTERRA West Cup (Lake Las Vegas, NV)

5.10.09 – XTERRA Del Valle (Livermore, CA)

5.31.09 – XTERRA Deuces Wild (Show Low, AZ)

6.14.09 – XTERRA Snow Valley (Snow Valley, CA)

6.27.06 – XTERRA Tahoe City (Tahoe City, CA)

8.29.09 XTERRA Lake Tahoe (Incline Village, NV)

An then if I qualify,

9.27.09 XTERRA US Championship (Ogden, UT)

To qualify I will need to score points in each race. Of all the races I score points my top three are counted and if I am in the top 9 in my age division (25-29) I will get a spot to the championship race.

So my training started in December and my first official race was Feb. 1, The XTERRA Mission Gorge 15k trail run in Mission Trails Regional Park outside of San Diego. Since I have been in my Base Training phase this event served more as a training motivation than anything else. It was an early season goal to keep my motivated to keep getting up at 6am even though it was (and still is) freezing in the morning. Here are a few pics from the event…

The course map. The red line and red elevation profile are the race I did.

When I got to the race I kept hearing about the “1000 stair” section of the trail. I thought to myself, it can’t be that bad. Well, see for yourself in the image below. The dark lin in the lower left is the trail and it ends at the top of the bluff. It was a 600ft. elevation gain in 1/2 a mile. And of course it was right in the middle of the trail at the 5 mile mark making it a mental battle as well as a physical one.

Here are some actions shots courtesy of www.byronwmoore.com

And the finish 1:31:21

And finally some awesome post race stretching shots from my beautiful wife and talented wedding photographer. (see more of her work at ryelj.com)