Phunt 50k (25 k & 11k options) (belated post)

(oops... just realized I forgot to publish this post a couple months ago! :))
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This past Saturday Lukas and I ran the Phunt trail race with friends of ours from work. The Trail Dawgs, a local trail running group in our area, put on this awesome FREE trail race every year - aided by volunteers and donations (food and water from the runners participating). There is also a food drive for the PA and DE food banks and any monetary donations go to charity too ~ very cool.

The main Phunt is a 50k ~ 2 loops in the Fair Hill State Natural Area in northeastern Maryland. There is a 25k option ~ one loop, and a 11k option - 5miles of the first loop and then a 2 mile cut over back to the finish/starting line.

Originally we signed up for the 25k but I had some IT Band issues during our half marathon in December so we dropped down to the 11k option. We were also super lazy for 3 weeks and didn’t start running again until last week - oops!

I've never run the trails in Fair Hill before and if I had, I probably would have given up my spot to someone else this time around. We were warned that they were hard and hilly but I had no idea what I was getting myself into! Combine my lack of preparation, knee pain from my IT Band around mile 2, and tons and tons of hills that just seemed to go up up up up and I was struggling… more than struggling, I was just WALKING lol.

In my defense… here is the elevation graph – it is a beast, espec. after not training hills at all since September! It isn't much of a defense, we were almost the last people done with the 11k lol but o well... we still made it!!

By "we" I refer to myself, my nice co-worker who was kind enough to stay with me, and her boyfriend - who waited for us a few times throughout the course to make sure we made it ok.

Where was Lukas you ask? ... Running the 25k!! Again... refer again to our lack of preparation and the elevation graph above... yep, he still successfully completed the 25k ~ longest he has ever run and espec. crazy long considering it was a hilly trail run! So proud of him!

I finished in 1:52... shameful, I know. Lukas finished in around 3:25 ... fantastic based on the circumstances and really for me, that would have been a fantastic pace I probably could not have hit with training even! (Slow me = super slow on trails = crawling up hill :))