Beautiful landscapes and hella rocky terrain at 5 Peaks Rattlesnake

Running through the woods at 5 Peaks Rattlesnake

June 11th: Getting back to racing after about a month off, starting in the trails at the 5 Peaks Rattlesnake.

I’d actually been a little off my running schedule as my wife had come down with Covid a few weeks prior, so I stayed home isolating for about a week, and after that stuck to outdoor running – didn’t do any workouts at the gym.

Regardless (irregardless?), I was signed up for the 13K Enduro and ready to go. I hadn’t run this race before, and in fact only hiked at Rattlesnake once, and was curious how/where the race would be run.

I remembered it having some pretty rocky parts, so wondered how they would be handled – easy answer, you run over the rocks!

The first K or so was around a field up to the mouth of the trail, and then it was a couple of K of pretty decent, not too technical trail running. A few short, rocky downhills, but not too bad.

And then it got nasty. An endless uphill climb, and then lots of running across the tops of big flat rocks … well, maybe a meter long with good toe-sized gaps in between them.

The course wasn’t wet, but it wasn’t 100% dry either. At some point I stopped running and decided to walk for a bit – just to get clear of the rocks at least. Call me a chicken, but I didn’t want to go down on the rocks and blow the rest of the season.

Beautiful scenery on this run. At parts of it you are running along the edge of a cliff, with the forest below stretching out for ages.

At around the 8K mark the course merges back with that of the Sport Race, and I came across Natalie and Mike from Team Vegan Trails and ran with them for a bit. My pace was slightly faster at this point and gradually I got ahead of the … until my toe caught a root and I went flying off into the woods at the side of the course, landing solidly on my ass.

At this point my watch registered an “incident”, texted my wife, and me not having my glasses managed to stop my run, rather than stopping the alert.

Mike and Natalie ran past me giving me the “are you ok?”, to which I was, just embarrassed (actually I think Natalie might have thought I’d gone into the woods for a pee).

I texted my wife to let her know that I was ok, she could ignore the alert, to which she responded: “can you pick up some empanadas on the way home”. Yes dear.

The rest of the run was fairly uneventful, and I took it fairly easy. There were some rocky climbs, but nothing like those flat rocks we were running across at the beginning.

A good race; cool experience. Probably the most technical one I’ve run to date. I know now what to expect here next year and will be better able to prepare for it.

First 9ish K above. At that point I went tumbling off into the woods at the side of the course and managed to stop my watch. Garmin detected the sudden stop and texted my wife in case I was in trouble. I texted her right after to let her know that I was ok. She asked me to pick up some empanadas on the way home.

Rest of he run below.