Saturday morning was miserable and amazing all at once. I woke up to ugly weather. 3 degrees Celsius and rain. A lot of rain. But that didn’t stop me from doing a “fun” trail run. I quote fun because that’s what was promised to us but it ended up being a gruelling intense 3-hour trail run that was definitely a first for me.

My running partners Michael & Clifton had invited me to the run hosted by the Toronto Salomon store at the Shops at Don Mills. The run was to take place in Sunnybrook Park. So I got up, dressed up in my cold weather running gear and showed up. Half the battle is complete.

The store was gracious enough to provide trail runners to everyone that showed up. Which I think is super awesome to actually be able to try them out on real trails. I luckily was well prepared with the Salomon SpeedCross that I purchased last Spring 🙂 they performed amazingly. While many were slip-sliding down and up the trails I was pretty proud to easily walk up some sections. And looking quite snazzy in them too. Several people mentioned shoe jealousy.

The rain did not let up the entire time. My UA mock turtleneck, layer under another UA T-shirt, Lululemon SeaWheeze shell & winter-run tights were definitely not waterproof. I only own cold and hot gear. No rain gear (definitely going to be my next purchase in the future). However, my gear kept me warm. I fuelled up in the am with two eggs on gluten-free bread and chicken bacon. I brought my water pack with me and threw in a Roctane Gu Energy Gel in one of the zippered pouches. I tried the Island Nectar flavour and loved it. We were told that one lap was 12K. My, usually 7 km trail runs usually take a little over an hour. Well, three hours later I was one tired cookie. I definitely could’ve used more gels.

My proudest moment of the run was continuously being the first girl running slightly behind the lead pack. They would stop and wait on occasion for people to catch up and I kept climbing over the ridge right after they stopped. My run partners looked slightly proud and were a tad competitive and I definitely got some high fives for showing up and being strong.

I got to chat with one gentleman about doing Tough Mudder and the training and how the actual day went back in May. We joked that if we did more runs like this we’d have been better prepared last May. Especially at one point when we had to cross a river up to thigh-high freezing water. I of course yelled “at least my shoes are clean now” after crossing.

Overall it was an amazing challenge. I felt strong, overwhelmed, smiled like a kid the majority of the time and loved being in a group of other “crazy” people.

The Facebook event announced it was only an annual run. I of course wrote on the post “What? This doesn’t happen weekly?” You know for sure my run partners and I are going to try and find the trails again next week 🙂

Love me some trail running! Is anybody else run trails this weekend?