On Saturday, I ran the 31 km stretch of Ecotrail Oslo. I've previously run both the 10 km and 21 km distances in the past. One of the reasons I like Ecotrail is that the cutoff is very generous. I started at 12:30, and needed to make it to the finish line by 10 pm. No big deal, right?
I haven't had time to do any trail running this year, and I had been forewarned that the first 10 km were very "technical", as they say here in Norway. We had heavy rain showers the day before, so I knew that the trail would be pretty wet. With the first 4 km uphill, hubby and I decided to walk the first 4 km, then run as much as possible, with walk breaks. It turned out to be practically impossible for me to do much more than walk this first section. The photos on the left are from that bit. At first I laughed at needing a chain to climb a rock. I missed that chain later! The trail was very muddy, swampy and full of rocks to climb over. Not to mention the heavy shower that fell on us (and hadn't been forecast).
Once we got to the first aid station (with nice cake), I was relieved. Now we were on familiar ground. We would be running along a river down to the fjord. This is the route we had done twice before, except that the 31 km runners would be running on the other side of the river than we had before when we did the 21 km route. The photo on the right is from this section. And this is basically what we did for about 8 km. Steep climbs and descents along the river with lots of mud (actually clay on some sections) abd lots of rocks. We had a railing on a fair bit of it, but not everywhere. And we were on a really narrow track on a cliff. There was no railing at all on one particularly scary section, where it would have been very easy to tumble down the 30 m or so down to the river. One of the amazing people who actually managed to run past us called out "I wonder how many of the others have fallen into the river?". I was amazed by people being able to run in these conditions, while I slowly made my way up and down.
It was really disheartening to make our way out of the forest to discover how many hours we had spent on a mere 21 km - and we had 10 to go! My spirits weren't great at this point, but it was good to finally be able to run. That didn't last for long though, as my toes were really pinching at this point. I guess my Salomons aren't meant for really long runs. Hubby and I ended up walking the final 8 km. It was getting pretty cold and windy by now. I was really pleased to meet a couple of our parkrun friends just before the finish line. Seeing them gave me a little boost.
We finished in 8 hours. I've never been on my feet this long before for an event. Poor hubby had never done more than 2 1/2 hours before, but he was a real trooper.
I'm planning to write to the race organizer and point out that they need to put better information on their website. Basically something like: if you think the 21 km is difficult, don't move up to the next distance. I actually think that it is quite irresponsible of them to organize an event along such treacherous terrain - but don't think that they'd care. I wore trail shoes, but there were a lot of runners out there in regular shoes! I shudder to think how they did.
I have to add my final petty complaint. It was really disappointing while I was out there to realize that I would be out for so many hours and not come home with a marathon medal.
Run Rabbit Trail Mix Challenge
Bit late but my New Forest 10k report.
HM training run 26 - Canicross event!
