2010 Fall Colors Half Marathon

Rainy, windy, cold, muddy - and a great, fun race.

The weather forecast for this morning wasn't auspicious, but things looked OK as Chris, Dave and I rolled into the parking lot for the Fall Colors Trail runs. A little chilly, a little sprinkly, but not too bad. Here's what it looked like as we got registered, got dressed, and warmed up:



Before too long, it was time to line up and listen to a quick race briefing:



And get started. Wow, did it feel good to start moving and build up some warmth! The first hill took care of that pretty well - Click "View Details" to check out the elevation profile here:


Here's an elevation profile:

People were pretty speedy heading up the first parts of the climb:



But as it dragged on, everyone slowed up a bit:



And eventually walked up some of the steepest parts:



Still just a light drizzle, but it didn't matter as long as we had stuff like this to look at:



There were some stream crossings:



Some great running in the tall trees:



And then the faster folks started coming back from the out-and-back portion. There are pictures of quite a few people here at my Picasa page for the race, so if you were there, go and take a look - there might be one of you.

After the turnaround:



we made our way back downhill for a ways, and I fell in behind these guys going through the aspens:







It started raining a little more about here - the trail surface was getting muddy down in the valley:



Back to the road, then a sketchy stream crossing:



And some more climbing. But this time we were rewarded with a rainbow:



And after the climb, a descent on the other side:



Not long after this, the little break in the rain stopped and I didn't want to take out the camera anymore. By the time I finished, it was coming down pretty hard and I was soaked. But I felt great! Managed to keep my pace in the "feeling good" zone the whole time, and the smiles of everyone out on the course were inspiring. I was proud to be out there today with everyone, grinding out a soggy 10K or half marathon. Cheers to a great race, and a great bunch of people to be out there with!

Results are now up on the Silver State Striders website, in PDF form.