The frozen trails 50K is a fun little event run about 10 miles east of Eugene at Mt. Pisgah. The course has about 4000’ of climbing and often is very muddy. The racers run around Mt. Pisgah a total of four times. However there are three variations of the loop that take you up to different fractions of the summit. Due to a rather unusual dry fall, the trails were in much better shape this year than they were last year. The course this year also added a small out and back to one of the aid stations which made the overall course about 600 meters longer. Due to the drier conditions and possibly my rusty ability to pace myself for an ultra, my first three laps around the mountain were quite a bit faster than last year. Headed out for the last lap I think I was about 15 min. under last years’ time. I think I did a good job of taking in calories however my fluid intake was embarrassing. Approaching the summit loop I was starting to fall apart and my climb up to the top turned into little more than a slow walk. I also lost about 5-8 minutes at the base of the climb when one of the turns was unmarked. When you add it all up, my 15 min buffer was gone and I finished in about the same time as last year. No matter, it was great to be running long again and I did better than I expected.
