Tecumseh Trail Marathon, Dec 2nd, 2006

Dashing through the forest along mostly single track trails covered in leaves, countless stream crossings, log hopping, up and down hill after hill after hill, suffering three falls with soft landings on leaves. It was a lot of fun for about two and a half hours -- the trail wore me out by then, though but I kept going anyway to finish in 3:47:00 -- good enough to win my age group and place 34th overall. Winning time was 3:16.

It rained solid on Thursday resulting in overfilled creeks and causing course officials to make last minute on the fly course changes prior to the race start at 1030 on Saturday morning. We ended up running about four miles on roads about half way into the course in order to avoid a one lane bridge that was well under water.

Race day was cold, with high temperatures in the 20's but it was mostly sunny. I wore tights and long tech shirt and never felt the need to take off my gloves nor my wool hat. Tecumseh is a great race and was one of the 50 marathons in 50 days that Dean Karnaces (author of Ultramarathon Man) ran.

Bloomington is a vibrant university town with a variety of ethnic restaurants. Friday I enjoyed Tibetan food at the Snow Lion restaurant and Saturday night I savored Afghanistan cuisine at the Samira Restaurant. One could spend weeks in that town eating a different country's food every night. My 80th lifetime marathon and 42nd marathon state.

Next on the docket is the obscure Otter Creek Trail Marathon near Louisville, Kentucky (state #43) next Sunday, Dec 10th.