Lessons Learned On My First Trail Race
From NYC’s urban jungle to the French Alps
Earlier this year, I decided to run my first-ever trail race. Since it was a new adventure for me, I decided to help myself by choosing a terrain I was familiar with: the French Alps, and more precisely the Combloux village.
I grew up hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter in Combloux with my family. When I learned the village had a trail running weekend, I got pretty excited! I did not know what to expect, but I knew it would be a fun challenge.
Here are my main takeaways from this experience:
Getting ready for a mountain trail race is hard
I knew I was going off the beaten path (pun intended) when signing up for this race. I did not know by how much. This race highlighted two characteristics I am not used to:
- elevation
- non-concrete paths
Elevation
The elevation gain I was training for was unheard of for me, as we can see here.
Obviously, this cannot be replicated in New York City. I religiously did hill repeats and bridge reps during my training, but it was clearly missing the duration component: doing five minutes of uphills and downhills multiple times does not translate well to going uphill and downhill for an hour straight each.
Non-concrete paths
I am used to running around the track or on roads. I have hardly ever run in forests or dusty roads. So that I could get used to it, I set out to go once per week, usually on weekend days, outside the city to find actual trails. This was quite the time commitment, adding a 90-minute commute to my schedule on average.
I think I did okay with getting ready for the trail component of the race. However, I did not do enough elevation in that training cycle. I probably will need to spend extended periods in the mountains to train specifically for mountain trail races, should I want to run those in the future.
Pace is irrelevant
Before the race, I tried to have a plan. Without any experience, it was more of a wild guess. I suspected those 25 kilometers would be a marathon-like effort. Maybe I could run this in about the same time — that seemed like a very conservative hypothesis. Eventually, it turned out to be quite accurate. I am not sure this is anything more than a coincidence.
I still got pretty frustrated with my pace during the race. In road running, we try to get even splits, and it is fairly easy to assess whether we are following the plan. During this race, I wished I did not have my watch. I never knew if my objectives were still reachable.
Race management is way more complicated in trails.
I want to do it again!
I really enjoyed this experience. It will take more preparation and training to be able to enjoy it more. I was not in control at all and that limited my experience. This race also made me realize how amazing the mountains can be. I will try to allocate more time to go there in the future.
