Riddle Run

Today the 11th annual Riddle Run today started with temps at around 13 Fahrenheit. Jeff (the RD) gives his speech before the start and as we're standing in snow my toes are getting numb. At the end of his speech he yells "go" we all start off for the snow-covered trail.

The conditions were significantly better than last year when the snow was deeper and never really packed down. This led to faster times, with the winner coming in at 3:58:30. That was Matt Small, who I ran with the entire race. We really had no idea either of us could win, but we managed negative splits the entire race, with our last lap at about 31 minutes. On that lap we passed 3 people, going from 4 & 5 to 1 & 2. Literally running side-by-side, when Jeff yelled out "you guys are first," we kind-of looked at each other and wondered what to do. One of the awards for winning the race is a right to register for the Clinton Lake 30M in March. The CL 30 fills fast, so even though the winner of Riddle still has to pay an entry fee, it's still a valuable prize. Matt hadn't signed up but I had, so we decided that he would finish just ahead of me.