Race Report:2015 KTC Lakeshore Trail Trek Marathon

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to run in another one of the Knoxville Track Club's trail series races, The Lakeshore Trail Trek Marathon. This was the first year for the marathon. Last year I ran this same trail race but the long distance portion was a brutal for me 16 miler as I went out to fast and struggled to finish after about 7 miles. Needless to say, after a few more races and again struggling this year in some of them due to starting out too fast, I finally wised up and took things slow.

This was a big race for me. Albeit I've run in a handful for 50k's up to this point as well as a 12 hour race in which I ran a little over 50 miles in under the 12 hour time, this would be the first time I had attempted a marathon, on trails no less, since my first ever debacle attempt, back in the day when I was in the Navy and thought it would be fun to run a road marathon. Needless to say, I only made it 16 miles that day when my legs said eff you buddy and decided they would not take another step forward. (as an aside, I had never trained for the marathon then and the night before I got pretty liquored up on Tekillya. Not making excuses or anything, but seriously I had no business attempting that Shamrock Marathon in Va. Beach back in 1994).

Race Report: Norris Dam Hard Trail Race 50K - Sept. 1, 2013

The Norris Dam Hard Trail Race 50K was a goal of mine when I sat down earlier in the year and made a list of trail races that I wanted to do. Included in that list was the Dark Hollow Wallow at Big Ridge, and The Panther Creek Challenge. Of course as the year has progressed I've thrown a couple other races into the mix. I guess you can say I've become somewhat of a nut when it comes to trail running, and the further the distance the better.

After taking a week or so off from Panther Creek, I developed my training plan and for 14 weeks leading up to the race, I was running 3 days a week, one of which was my long run which started at 8 miles and crescendo-ed at around 24 miles two full weeks prior to the event. Long and arduous were those long runs, but in the end they definitely paid off.

Trail Race Report: Wanderer's Trail Race 1/20/2013

I've been a road runner for most of my running life. That was until this year. Actually, back in late November of last year I started my training to run the Dark Hollow Wallow (an 11 mile trail race) at our "home" park Big Ridge State Park. The Dark Hollow Wallow is put on by The Knoxville Track Club and is part of their Treadin' Trodden' Trail series. Last year was the first year of the race and I would have loved to run it then but was in no shape to run 11 miles on tough trails. So I made it my goal to run it this year.

As mentioned, I started my training towards the end of November. I had run a couple trails prior to this point but I didn't dare call myself a trail runner as it wasn't my normal mode of running. Of course if you run and run on a trail then you're a trail runner. Up until this point I usually ran on the roads and on tracks to train for 5k's, 10k's and a couple of half marathons. During my training, I thought it would be a good idea to get some trail racing experience prior to the Dark Hollow Wallow before I bit off more than I could chew. The Treadin' Trodden' Trail series starts off every year with the Wanderer's Trail Race on the Maryville College campus. It's a 4 mile trail race and I thought with where my training was already, this would be the perfect opportunity to find out what it's like to run in a trail race.