I haven't run anything long since the Ouachita Trail 50K in April. My legs felt terrible at the end of that run, and I had to limp in on the 3-mile home stretch on a busy road...not the most fun in the world. I took a week off from running, and then slowly got back on track. I switched from the trail shoes I wore up in Arkansas to New Balance MT101 shoes, because they didn't make my knees hurt. My best guess is that by running in the MT101s, I changed my stride, and made my overpronation shoes overcompensate. All of this made me cut down on the miles I would run, because I didn't want to hurt myself.

I switched over completely to the 101s for running, doing a 5.5 mile run up at Northwest Balcones Park/Spicewood Valley Trail with Rocky, and then a 6 mile out and back on the Shoal Creek Trail last Thursday in about an hour. Pretty happy with both of those, I decided to do the Rogue Ranch 30K on Sunday - I thought it would be 3 10K loops and I could switch from the MT101s back to my Montrail Hardrocks if I ran into problems. Apparently Rogue switched the course format the night before the race to a 1 mile out, two loops that were different, 1 mile back, so no changing shoes during the race!

The run itself went really well - no problems with 18 miles on the MT101s, ran the whole thing with Dave Silvestro, and we set a really good pace, taking turns leading on the trails. The trails were actually pretty hard to follow, with five or six different colors of flags on the course, white arrows from other races, and broken caution tape along the trail that I think was supposed to point us in one direction or another. Heard that about 25 runners in the 30K (out of 75) didn't even find one of the aid stations, and plenty of people that were behind me in the race never passed me on the trail, but also didn't finish after me...course cutting, they got lost, dropped out, I don't really know.

The aid station volunteers were friendly but only one aid station really knew where they were on the 30K course. Probably because the course was weird (two loops sharing some of the same trails, plus a 1.2 mile out and back to the first aid station from the start/finish), it was a brand new race, and no one told them.

Biggest gripe is that 2 minutes before the race starts, a race official says that we aren't coming back to the start/finish, but lots of people are talking over her at the starting line. I didn't want to carry 18 miles of gels in my pockets, so I asked her if they had gels at the aid stations, and she said they did....of course they didn't have any gels at any aid station, so I had to make do with 3 gels for 18 miles, plus all the Oreo cookies I could grab to take on the run. Those worked pretty well.

Dave really picked it up on the last mile, and I just tried to stay with him to the finish - it's a little hard to tell from the GPS track below, but we did the last mile at about a 9:00 pace.

The Rogue Ranch 30K at Reveille Peak Ranch on May 15 was the last long trail race in Central Texas until the Captain Karl's The Lake in July. The two races are on pretty similar terrain.