The North Face ECS- aka- my first official trail race

Today I signed up for my first official trail race. I say official beacuse I've been running around the mountains whenever I can for years, but it's always been on my own time and just for the adventure of it. When an ad for the North Face Endurance Challenge Series showed up in my Runner World magazine I gave it a glance, but thought that it was just Ultra's, which I know enough to know that those are not for me. After about the 3rd ad I saw, I decided to just give it a look, and lo and behold, it's NOT just Ultra's and suddenly I was all in. I signed up for the 10k at Bear Mountain in May. I know I can run farther then 10k, but I figured for my first official race, I should go conservative and pick one that I felt pretty confident about completing in the time alloted (2 hours for the 10k). I'm hoping it all goes well and that I can turn this into a yearly race, moving up to the 1/2 maybe next year after I get a sense of the course and the mountain. 

So now I have to decide how to train for this bad boy. There's no mountains near by, and let's be honest- the weather here is currently keeping me from runnning outside all that often anyways. For noe I'll just keep plugging away and keep my eye on the trail!

source: http://nysparks.com/parks/13/details.aspx

Bear Mountain Virtual Tour