Race day at Bandera has three different distances covering the same trails at the same time. All three courses are slightly different, taking off in different directions, so you don't see many people from the other distances when you're on the course. I started about middle of the pack, which is about right for me. The 50-k race starts behind the lodge on a jeep trail and goes for a mile or two until it hits the hills and single track. Once you hit the hills, the pack gets broken up pretty quick.

The hills at Bandera are not mountains. I think the worst climb I went up was between 5 and 10 minutes. However, they are steep (by any standard) and rocky. Some of the rocks are loose, and can present some real hazards. A few of the descents are slower than the climbs, if that's possible. It's especially bad the first hour when some of the gonzo guys who showed up late at the start feel like they need to go flying by everyone on these descents. One thing about the hills is that I think they force almost everyone to walk at least portions of this course.

The views at the top of some of the climbs are pretty spectacular. Too bad I was breathing so hard and had so much sweat rolling into my eyes, or I would have really enjoyed them! In the race briefing, Joe talked about the Sotol cactus. This is a relatively small plant that grows 2 feet tall or so. The higher sections of the course have a lot of these plants, and the limbs extend into the trails. You don't really notice them when you run through them, but I ended up with a lot of really small pricks from these plants. You kind of forget about them until you hit the shower, then you remember pretty quick. It almost felt like a bad sunburn.....just kind of a prickly burning sensation when the water hit.

I was doing pretty well until around the 20-mile point. December holiday activities kind of took priority over a lot of the key training sessions I was planning, so I knew from the start I was undertrained. Things got little grim for me when I left the cross-roads aid station the first time. I walked most of this section, even though terrain wasn't that bad. Maybe the walking gave me enough recovery time, because I stated running again a few minutes from the second time through crossroads and was able to keep this up until the end of the course. If my training was up to par, I think I should take 30-45 minutes off my time.

The Tejas Trails web site is great, and it gives a very fair and accurate description of what this course is really like.


The only real preventable issue I had during the race was a severe case of "Bloody Nipple Chafing". I've had this problem in the past, but have some tried and true ways of preventing it. Not sure what happened at Bandera, but I looked down after an hour and a half or so and had a pretty large blood spot on my shirt. I was lucky the weather was good and I was able to finish the race without my shirts on.

Nothing....just waited around for my ride back home!


Recent training was my real limiter. I'm thinking about shifting the focus for Fall of 2011 from tri's to ultras.


Fantastic race on a beautiful but very challenging course.