Sometimes, I’m eager to write a race recap, and other times, I drag my feet (or fingers, as it were). I haven’t been that motivated to write about Badger Cove for a number of reasons. For one thing, due to the park being closed from heavy rains, the race got moved from Del Valle in Livermore to Wildcat Canyon in El Sobrante. This means that all of the information from the race won’t be that useful to anyone wanting to run Badger Cove in the future. Second, it was a fairly uneventful race. I arrived, met up with DD, we ran, we went home. Third, it wasn’t a great outing for me, but that was to be expected. I felt sluggish almost the entire race. It was my second to slowest trail half marathon ever, even though the course had almost 1000 feet less elevation gain than my slowest half (Summit Rock).
Despite all of those things, however, it wasn’t a bad day. The hills were gorgeous – lush and green. Once we got to the top of the first hill, we had sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. I spent over 2 hours of quality time chatting with DD, catching up on each others’ lives. I didn’t trip, fall, or sprain my ankle, which was a victory in itself given the rough conditions in parts of the trail. And I finished a tough trail half marathon. Even if I’m not as fit as I have been in the past, I’m still grateful to be able to spend almost 3 hours on the trails and not be completely demolished afterwards.
Instead of writing more, I’ll finish this post with a slide show from all of the photos I took during the race. The last two are courtesy of Brazen (yay free race photos!).
Official results:
time: 2:59:02 (13:39/mile)
13/19 AG, 60/98 F; 139/194 overall
Howdy! My name is Jen and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I like to eat, run, and blog, but not usually at the same time.
Running Tangents 
Nice happy runner photos! And oh, the greenery… gotta love Wildcat Canyon. I’m not sure how they routed the course for Badger Cove, but those hills will make any runner feel sluggish no matter how fit you are. Between tough races like this and your pacing duties, sounds like you’re working your way back into shape!
Thanks, Mike!
I love all the green so much!
Me too! It’s a nice payoff from all of the rain this winter.
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