I'm no longer a (trail running) virgin

Had my first taste of a real trail Sunday morning. Met up with one of the Team Rogue coaches, Ruth, and some other runners for 5 miles on the Barton Creek Greenbelt.

In a word: Harder than I could have ever imagined. You don't skirt around at 7:00 min/mile pace through a real trail, unless you want to hurt yourself. Each step was an adventure. Rock. Twig. Tree root. I never knew "running" a 10-minute-mile would make me so tired - especially when we are just talking about Mile 2.

And I felt even worse on Mile 3 - and the funny thing is we walked for about a 1/4 of that mile, up this huge hill. We didn't walk so much as climb. Hey, this water bottle is getting in the way of me hanging on to this rock. We were walking and climbing and walking and climbing and I. Was. Out. Of Breath. And it was a 14-minute mile.

Sheesh. Where is the hard, hot concrete when you need it?

Anyways, I got through 5.5 miles of trails in a little more than an hour. (The time sounds like the last five miles of all of my marathons). Afterwards, my ankles hurt, but I was glad to have done it.

I see black people: I just knew, knew, knew I wouldn't see anybody that looked like me running through what is a basically a forest in Austin. I mean, we don't mess around too much in habitats that remind you of something out of Friday the 13th. But lo and behold, as we were near the finish, I saw this 20-something black woman, on a bike no less. Now see, she was much braver than I, because it was hard for me to run through those jagged rocks and tree branches and here this woman was, helmet and everything, traversing this place on a bike. Way to go, Sistah!

I also saw 7 black folks on the Town Lake trails dirt path on Monday morning. The notable thing was that there were more black men than women. Usually, the sisters outnumber the brothers by a 3 to 1 margin. But not today. Still, it has become clear that the Sisters in Austin are much more fit than the Brothers.