Ah, the Trail Quake race. The start horn goes, and you just go up, and up, and up, and up on a single-track hiking trail. Then, you turn around and you go down, and down, and down, and down. And then it’s over. Over in a thank-goodness-that’s-over kind of way.

This race is completely bonkers. But in that good way, where you’d run it again today if you could. It’s some of the most beautiful trails in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, it’s shaded, and it has that awesome much-more-mellow-than-a-road-race feel of the Brazen Racing series. Love it.

Next year, I’ll run the half marathon. Or, at least, in my dreams that’s what I’d love to do. This year, after a month away from racing, the 5k was plenty — over 700 feet of climbing in around 1.6 miles, and then 700 feet of drop in the last 1.6 miles. It really gets you working — you can see my heartrate sat in the 190 bpm range for most of the race.

I had a good race. I came fourth overall, and was the second male. Not bad, but the serious runners were in the 10k and the half-marathon, and probably the smarter people don’t try and push this race too hard anyway. Selina ran well too and placed 6th overall. I ran the race in 30:13, which was 7 seconds slower than last year.

Anyway, that’s 18 races in the books. That’s a lot, but I am a mile behind where I should be. If I run two races every weekend in June, I’ll only be a couple behind target; because, of course, I should have run 26 races at the half-way mark. I’ve already found two for next weekend, so that’ll help.