Chris Aniszczyk's (zx) diatribe

Last Saturday, I trekked out from Austin to Lake Houston Wilderness Park for the Piney Woods 10mi Trial Run. Nothing like a three-four hour drive leaving Austin in the middle of the night to run a trail race.

It was a cold and muddy day sloshing through the trails. I had a great start to the race and jumped out in front to hang out to second place most of the race. The mix of single track and stretches of road was fantastic, the course was never boring. The only mishap I had was towards the last half mile of the race where the trail was poorly marked and I choose the wrong turn. I had to pedal back and that’s where a couple of people caught up to me and then I wiped out pretty badly on the trail while fuming about the poor trail marking.

I managed to finish the race in 1:14 and finished first in my age group. I came out of the trails pretty much covered in mud… my socks were no longer white but a dark shade of gray…

After the race, everyone bunched around the fire pit to get some warmth and also to chow down on some BBQ and beer. The BBQ was excellent and the race organizers did an excellent job supplying the attendees with unlimited BBQ and beer.

In the end, it was a fun race and I hope they put it on again next year. My only advice is that if there’s a split on the trail, please take extra caution in labeling where to go for us runners who get tunnel vision sometimes 🙂

Yesterday, I participated in the inaugural Dirty Du Half Marathon out in Smithville, Texas. Its been raining the past couple days so the morning started out wet and cloudy. The drive to Smithville is only about an hour from downtown Austin. Upon arrival, I noticed the course was going to be pretty muddy given the condition of the start line field.

The race organizers cautioned us that the course may be a bit muddy due to the weather with some potential deep streams to cross. I expected a muddy course with some streams to jump. What I didn’t expect was 13.1 miles of muddy trail perfection. I ended up sloshing through 24 inch deep streams, loose mud and slippery hills.

The race was never boring and I came out the other end covered in mud. In fact this was the most enjoyable trail race I’ve ever run due to the great course and mix of perfect muddy conditions. I managed to finish the race 4th overall (3rd in my gender group) with a time of 1:51ish. My prize?

A New Belgium beer glass and box of delicious mountain mix Cliff Mojo bars.

I feel sorry for the mountain bikers who had to wade through that course this morning. It’s interesting to note Lance Armstrong holds the mountain bike course record with an impressive time of 1:36:05! I don’t think that record will be broken this morning given the dirty conditions. In the end, I want to thank the race organizers for putting on a great event. I hope that the trail half marathon shows up on the agenda again next year and that more people show up. Don’t let a little rain scare you from good time.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to participate in the Rock n’ Roll San Antonio Half Marathon. It was a foggy morning and more than 20,000 runners showed up! Since I like to play with numbers occasionally, an interesting thing to note is that of the runners that participated, roughly 70% were women. Is that a trend that I missed somewhere? I thought there would be a more even split.

I enjoyed running the half marathon given that there was music about every mile. I didn’t get a PR but I’ll settle for my 1:35:52 time. As an ode to my computer science background, I managed to finish 256th overall. Here are my stats for the day:

Chip Time: 1:35:52
Overall Place: 256 / 20021
Gender Place: 217 / 7436
Division Place: 32 / 971
Pace: 7:19
5K: 21:31
10K: 43:21
15K: 1:07:02

The post race festivities were a bit ridiculous given the 20,000+ people surrounding the Alamodome.

I wonder if it makes sense to put a limit on how many people can attend an event.