It’s taken me some time to start and finish writing up this recap of the recently held Ahmanson 12K trail race because, in the past several months, I’ve lost my drive to write. Life has been challenging, but I’m trying to get some of that writing mojo back.
This post wasn’t supposed to be my first post after the last one, but I’m not ready to share that one yet. And now that I think about it, this particular recap wasn’t even supposed to have been written at all.
Back in December, my sister and I had planned on heading to Boston in April, but serious life matters happened. When I realized Boston needed to take a back seat, I decided to sign up for the newly added 18K distance of the Ahmanson Trails Run that just so happened to be taking place the same weekend as Boston.
About a month before the race, I wasn’t feeling the extra 4-ish miles. My endurance and fitness weren’t where I wanted them to be, and a couple of days before the race I jumped down to the 12K distance. I made the right call.
This year I was joined by my friend Crystal who at times, has been my trail running partner-in-crime (I wrangled her into running the San Diego 50 with me a few years ago). We met early at the start and as we were talking, a lovely woman walked up to us and asked me if I had a blog. It took me a few seconds to answer because I was trying to calibrate when it was the last time I posted and formulate my words since I haven’t been very active on this platform lately, but I said “Yes I do.”
We chatted for a few minutes and Stella was so sweet, and I have to say thank you to her for coming up to me. These past several months I’ve felt so disconnected from trail running and the running community itself, and she made me feel reconnected. It was very nice meeting you.
After the 18K runners took off, we were next. I’ve run this 12K course before on a training run, and as a sweeper a few years ago so I was familiar with it. But these trails are a bit intertwined and I don’t run them enough to know exactly where I’m going.
It’s nice racing with directions and arrows leading the way. Although a couple of miles from the finish, Crystal and I were running down the trail, talking about music, and in the zone, we made a quick turn to the right, when we should’ve made a quick turn to the left. After some very helpful ladies alerted us, we immediately noticed the 18K runners running towards us. Whoops.
After the training run, a few weeks back, I knew there was a possibility we’d be trudging across some small rivers, but we didn’t need to. We managed to cross the water crossings unscathed.
Crystal and I made our way through the beautiful but abundantly overgrown mustard seed flowers and at some point, we heard coyotes starting to howl off in the distance.
“Why is it the coyotes always seem to come out when we’re running a race together?!” I said to Crystal. We stopped to hear them for a minute, laughed, and then quickly carried on.
The weather was beautiful and the flowers were beautiful, but these trails aren’t my favorite to run on.
There is some double track, quite a bit of single track, and thick tall brush lining the trails. On warm days, I suspect rattlesnakes to be hovering alongside them and there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver around them if they surface. Lucky for us, the temperature was on the cool side and no snakes came out.
I realize this is probably going to be the shortest race recap I’ve ever written. I need to ease my way back into this writing thing again…just like my running, and this small trail race helped.
Thanks for reading!