Buck Mountain Mudslinger 2–Ryan runs WILD!

The 2013 race season has offically started, and I hit the ground running! On March 9, I laced up my Nike running shoes and headed up to the Buck Mountain Mudslinger for a six and a half mile trail running race put on by Run Wild Adventures. After driving up in cold foggy conditions my cousin and I arrived at the event to sunny skies and perfect trail conditions.

Last year’s race was run in about a foot of snow covering most of the race course, and were it wasn’t covered in snow it was deep mud making for very tough running conditions. The course consisted of horse trail, double track, fast downhills, and a lot of climbing. After the gun went off I was able to join a group at the front of about twenty racers in the first half mile before the first climb. Once the climb started to get really steep I was able to start making a few passes and work my way up to about tenth place.

After the first steep climb the course takes a short turn down a muddy trail. During my weekly trail runs I have found out that I am terrible at running downhill. My legs and hips just don’t have the flexibility and range of motion to run fast when the trail turns down causing a great deal of discomfort. As I made my way down the trail trying not to end up on my head, a few of the runners I had previously past were able to run by me.

The middle section of the course consisted of a few small rollers and then started up the big long climb to the highest point on the course. After taking a sharpe left hand turn at the top it’s all fast decending to the finish. This is were my race stared to go backwards. About three runners caught me very quickly and were out of site in a hurry. I managed to hold my place for most of the decent until the bottom were it gets fairly steep. This is were three more runners ran past me like I was standing still. I must say it was very impressive to see them run down a steep section with that amount of speed and not end up on their face skidding off the trail.

Next up was a short flat section through a beautiful park like setting of huge old growth forest to the finish line were I finished in 17th place overall with a time of :52:18. My cousin came across the line five minutes behind in 40th place overall. Thanks to perfect trail conditions and some pre race training my time was ten minutes faster then last year. The day ended with post race bread, beer, and a huge smile on our faces!

Thanks for reading,
Ryan Eisele