White Bull Winter Trail Series #1 - Tapo Canyon Loop

         I showed up early again to the all familiar trailhead at Tapo Canyon Open Spaces after my pre race ritual bathroom and coffee break. This race consist of a 5 mile sprint over fairly non-technical terrain with very modest elevation gain. An easy sign up race morning and a very friendly atmosphere put on by the amazing race directors Randy and Sarita Shoemakers (also the directors of 805 Boot camp and Bandit 50K) made for a relax pre race. I stood around with Desirae "sizing" up runners while Connor laughed at the excitement going on around him and CJ was playing Mindcraft on my phone. Funny thing about "sizing" up the competition is that you can never really tell who your true competition is going to be, you think you can but your usually wrong. One guy shows up tall and lanky with all the right gear so I decide that this is my guy, the one I will do battle with.

       A few pre race photos and its off down a very gentle uphill for 1.3 miles against the wind with another very friendly runner. He was keeping pace with me well.. to well, thing was is he was running so close to me he was running me off the road. I wanted to yell at him "give me some room, this isn't a single track, this is a fire road!". Maybe he was trying to draft off of me, no big deal though I lost him at the first "hill". At the top of the first "hill" I look over my shoulder to see a tiny young looking girl nipping at my heels (remember my lack of sizing up the competition?). This girl was fast, I was feeling good at this point flying down the hill thinking she just went out to fast and I would be able to ditch her, but I look over my shoulder again and there she is! This would be the story of the rest of my race, every time I looked over my shoulders there she was right on my ass. At this point in the race I am running scared, I knew if I was going to win this race I had to push hard. I hate leading races, sometimes I would prefer trying to running down the completion in front of me, did I mention I was running scared!? After running a nice clip up the second and biggest hill of this race we fly down the hill and all the way to the finish, you can really run the last two miles hard if you have any legs left. At this point I'm still looking over my shoulders convinced that this girl is leaving just enough in the tank to run right past me at the finish. But it never happened, I flew across the finish line in first place and a new course record of 30:36, with Melissa right behind me at 30:53!

       A week to mentally prepare myself for race #2 - Long Canyon... Till then a beer to celebrate and a trail to run!